


Wherever You Go

by planethunter



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M, but like die hard or the power of love by frankie goes to hollywood, it is a christmas story that can be enjoyed at any time of the year, this is only a christmas fic in the sense that it is set around christmas, which is my excuse for not being able to update on time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-01-09 18:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12282474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planethunter/pseuds/planethunter
Summary: When war breaks out in England, Chas Dingle decides to send her son to the Highlands in an effort to keep him safe. By some strange turn of events, Aaron ends up in the company of previous one-night-stand Robert, and the pair embark on a road trip to Scotland neither of them will ever forget.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 2000 Miles by The Pretenders
> 
> cw. for really brief drug references in the first chapter and violence in later chapters.

When Aaron woke up, it was still dark. That was a first for a long time, especially considering it was a Sunday morning – he'd struggled to grow out of his teenage sleeping habits on the weekend if an alarm didn't do the hard work for him. He was initially disoriented when he wasn't greeted by the familiar dimensions of his own bedroom, blinked several times, and suddenly registered the halo of white light being eclipsed by blackout blinds.

Maybe he wasn't such an early riser, after all.

He considered submitting to the heaviness of sleep, hiding beneath the covers until whoever owned the bed he was occupying told him to fuck off because they needed to go to work or because their boyfriend was coming home. They weren't the only one with places to be. He'd promised his mum he'd help move the Christmas decorations down to the pub in time for the party later that week (why they had to be moved so early, he had no idea. It wasn't exactly like Chas and Charity to be organised) – so the sooner he could get away the better. It took another few savoured moments before memories of the night he'd left behind began flooding his head with increasing clarity – as did the headache.

_Adam. Adam's hand on his shoulder, saying something. What was he saying?_

_"-over there."_

He hadn't been listening. The memory persisted of feeling weird that night. It wasn't anything to do with being drunk - if anything, he hadn't been nearly drunk enough. Maybe he'd been ill, or tired, or just miserable. The cause hadn't registered, only the feeling of feeling like absolute shit.

_"Aaron!" Adam almost shouted, grinned and shook his head when Aaron finally looked up at him._

_"What?"_

_"I said," he stressed the 'said' as if he was repeating himself for the fourth time, "he keeps looking over at you."_

_He gestured with his drink (all of which were going for a quid and all of which tasted exactly the same, whether it was a vodka shot or lager. Aaron half blamed its dodgy nature for his mood) in a very unsubtle manner to a conventionally attractive guy across the room. The man in question responded with a quick glance in their direction, and what Aaron swore was a little smirk to himself before turning to resume his conversation with a faceless brunette in a red bodycon dress._

_"Usually when he's trying to pull a bird, he's straight," Aaron retorted, taking a self-assured sip of his pint. Nonetheless, he was unable to snap his gaze away from the blond man as he laughed at something the woman had said (or more likely something he'd said himself. He looked like a bit of a cocky bastard)._

_"Yeah," Adam hummed, and that could have been the end of it, but he pulled Aaron in by the shoulder and whispered in his ear, "usually."_

What time was it?

Aaron used his free hand, the one that wasn't cradling the side of his throbbing head, to reach out blindly onto the bedside table in search of his phone. His fingers latched onto something phone-sized and shaped, but not the right weight and with too many buttons on its surface - a remote of some sort. Bringing it up close to his face in the low light, he saw there were two arrows in opposite directions labelling the two central buttons, and he would be lying if he said he didn't jump a little when pressing the top one caused the blinds to jolt up and flood the room with a slither of white sunlight.

The brightness of the light from under the blinds suggested the time was much later than he wanted it to be. Hopefully it wasn't quite afternoon - the buses to Emmerdale weren't frequent on a Sunday to his knowledge and he fancied breakfast before he left, and because he wasn't relying on a guy with remote control blackout blinds to offer him any, that meant locating the nearest Spoons, and _that_ meant locating his phone.

 The room was extremely neat - and not just the quaint tidiness of someone with good organising skills. It was _showroom_ neat, as if no one had ever lived in it, as if it was kept so pristine simply for the resident to look in on occasionally with a self-satisfied smile when reminded of how unnecessarily rich they were. Beneath him, he realised the floor was wooden - floorboards were his initial assumption - but then he remembered the blinds and concluded it was more likely oak, but no less freezing to stand on when he had to inevitably walk across it. Elegant sliding wardrobes replaced the far wall, the slender mirror on the left end panel would have shone Aaron's glorious image back at him if it was open. A desk and leather office chair stood between them and the bed, spotless except for an open laptop and what looked like a receipt placed neatly on the silver surface.

And here he was, legs tangled in the snow-white sheets, messing up the harmony of his immaculate surroundings with his pounding head and scruffy stubble. The whole setup reminded him of the residencies of bankers and lawyers he saw on television dramas: huge declarations of wealth on the 42nd floor, coffee machines that cost more than most cars atop pristine marble counters, a black leather sofa that's only really there for display. The detective and their assistant arrive at the flat and peer out through its enormous windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, only to be met with the sight of the inhabitant's splattered remains on the street below. If it's _Silent Witness_ , it was suicide. If it's _Line of Duty_ , he was pushed.

He was sure the guy wasn't a banker. He'd said something about ' _estates_ ' and _'building management'_ , but from what Aaron's aching brain had allowed him to recall, no mention of the FTSE. That didn't mean he wasn't rich, obviously - you must be doing well for yourself to have remote controlled blinds - but just how rich you could be if you chose to live in Leeds and not London (or wherever all the footballers lived) was debatable. Aaron started to doubt if their conversation had even drifted to the subject of employment, or if he was he was just creating false memories now that he'd seen the man's apartment. It was possible they hadn't even had much of a conversation at all, his memory of the whole thing was skewed and only bothered returning to him in trickles of useless information.

"He's alive!"

The unfamiliar voice made Aaron jump as the blinds had done, and he became suddenly conscious of the fact this guy was going to think he was a nervous wreck. The man stood in the doorway to the hall, fully dressed in a crisp white shirt and black jeans, two mugs of coffee - judging by the smell - in his hands. Aaron met his eyes with a sort of apologetic smile (apologetic for what? Sleeping in? Daring to grace the floor of his immaculate posh-boy home with his common feet? The guy was making him feel guilty without passing so much as two words between them. Prick) and gratefully received one of the two mugs as it was passed carefully to him. Aaron turned it around so that the handle was in his right hand, revealing a faded National Trust logo on one side.

"Cheers," he smiled again, silently hoping he'd put enough sugar in. His mum always had a go at him for 'practically saturating' every hot drink he had with at least three teaspoons of sugar, Aaron always insisted he needed the extra energy. To his surprise, the first sip he took suggested this guy had read his mind, "made a lucky guess with the coffee."

"You told me last night: 'three sugars - actually, you know what, just put as much as you want in. Go mental'," the man seemed amused at Aaron's lack of recollection of this exchange and the face he pulled on hearing such an awful impression of him. Aaron found the idea that he would take the time between finishing and falling asleep to tell a stranger how he takes his coffee less believable than the notion this man had some sort of telepathic powers.

"What, seriously?"

"Well, I asked," he drummed his fingers where they rested on the side of his mug, "I figured if you were anything like me you need it first thing after a rough night, so I got your order in quick."

Aaron suddenly felt extremely bad for writing him off as a rich dickhead. He still could be, of course, but even this small gesture exceeded expectations, "thoughtful of you," he said, trying his best not to sound sarcastic. In any other situation, he would probably find the man's close and rather overbearing nature to be patronising, but for some strange reason it seemed genuine and oddly comforting. He battled the sentimentality with some winding up of his own, "so... _rough_ night, was it?"

The man laughed, becoming a little flustered, "not that I can remember. We were both pretty fucked."

 _Fucked was one word for it_ , Aaron thought. Though judging by the way the guy was intermittently rubbing his nose, their definitions of 'fucked' were rather different.

"To say the least."

"But I didn't forget everything," he tilted his head ever so slightly, a somewhat feline gesture, "Aaron."

"Robert," he waited a moment, watching the man's eyes just in case he'd got that wrong and greatly embarrassed himself. He seemed to be in the clear, "see, I can't usually do that."

Robert finally took a sip of his coffee, "one time, I couldn't remember this bloke's name, but it had gone too long to ask, and I thought he looked a bit like a young Richard Hammond," he explained, laughing briefly to himself before continuing, "so I called him Richey to his face the whole night and the morning after and he didn't correct me. Never found out his real name."

Aaron sipped at his coffee, looking now down at the mug instead of Robert's eyes, "so you are gay, then."

Robert looked equally amused as taken aback, "I just shagged you, didn't I?"

"I saw you talking to a girl last night," it came out a lot more accusingly than Aaron had intended, and he felt like he'd wandered into unsafe territory when Robert's face shifted and conveyed moderate irritation.

"Yeah, well," he took his left hand off his coffee mug and gestured vaguely to himself, "one of these elusive bisexuals."

Aaron swallowed, hoping he hadn't taken offence, "I take it she wasn't into you then?" It felt like every word that fell from his mouth was just digging himself deeper into the hole of looking like a complete dick, "not cause of you being bi or anything, you just seemed to lose her fairly quickly."

Robert shrugged, "she was nice, yeah. Leyla, Lola...Leyla," he finally decided, "I was talking to her for a while and she seemed lovely. But then I saw you."

"And you thought: 'fuck me, if he's not the fittest guy I've ever seen in my life.'"

Robert laughed again, "those exact words," he took the few steps necessary to reach the bed as he spoke, sitting cross legged above the duvet on the opposite side to Aaron. He was far away enough that Aaron could lean sideways without touching him, but close enough that he could smell Robert had already had a shower.

He suddenly remembered the reason he'd gotten up in the first place, performing another quick scan of the room to make sure the daylight hasn't put it somewhere obvious, "you haven't seen my phone anywhere, have you?"

Robert looked at him as if he'd been waiting for him to ask, "black iPhone?"

"Yeah."

Robert leaned over the side of the bed, holding his mug steadily in one hand and producing Aaron's phone from the floor with the other. He had to cross his arms over awkwardly to return it to its owner without spilling his coffee - with a smile, of course.

"Cheers," Aaron returned the gesture, and on unlocking his phone was half relieved and half annoyed to find it was only half past eleven, "didn't look far, obviously."

They then fell into a silence - one that, again, Aaron would have found awkward on most occasions but felt perfectly comfortable with at this point in time. Like he was in exactly the right place. Apart from the low buzz of traffic in the street below, the only sound that graced his ears was Robert's fingers tapping a repetitive rhythm on his mug, and his own googling the bus timetable. It turned out those travelling to Emmerdale weren't as infrequent as he's originally thought - every twenty minutes from a stop that was a five-minute walk from his current location.

Robert was the one to break the peace, closing his eyes and sighing deeply, "I feel like shit," his voice was slightly hoarser than before, and Aaron wondered if he was putting it on.

"Bad comedown?" he inquired, mirroring Robert in not turning to face him. This was going to be awkward if it turned out he just had a cold.

The exasperated laugh from Robert suggested Aaron might have gravely misinterpreted his state of intoxication, but the words that followed proved otherwise, "is there such thing as a good one?" He shook his head, "I've had worse. Much worse. Look at me, I'm up, I'm dressed," he took a long drink from his coffee, nearly finishing it, "raring to go."

"Then you're doing better than me," in saying that, Aaron reminded himself of the severity of his own hangover. He'd almost managed to forget about the headache after being so surprised at the perfection of his coffee.

"You'll feel better when you've finished that," Robert nodded down to the mug in Aaron's hands, before sitting up straight suddenly, apparently remembering why he'd come in in the first place, "oh, did you want any breakfast? Sorry, I was meant to ask you before."

"I'm fine, thanks," Aaron was once again set off balance by Robert's generosity, but then it was just breakfast he was offering, not a record deal, "I was gonna get something on my way home, I don't want to put you out," he was going to add _in your condition_ , but that might have sounded too much like he was taking the piss.

"You're not at all, I haven't had anything either," he reassured him, pulling himself hastily off the bed as he spoke, before turning suddenly in realisation, "unless you need to be away, sorry, you don't have to feel obliged-" he was interrupted by Aaron's half repressed laughter, "what?"

"You," he explained after composing himself, though the amused grin remained, "apologising for being nice," he shook his head, "whatever, if you're already making it for yourself, I will. Buses are regular."

"Where abouts do you live?" Robert asked, doing the head tilting thing with such subtlety Aaron half believed he was imagining it.

"Emmerdale."

With the coffee mug in his hand, Robert looked as if he would have definitely done a spit-take at that point had they been in an American sitcom. It was the same expression Aaron imagined he could provoke if he'd told him he was an exile from North Korea, or that he'd just broken his remote-control blinds, "Emmerdale?"

It really was a bit of an overreaction, Aaron gave him an incredulous look, "yeah, why?"

"No way."

"What? It's not that much of an exciting place," Aaron added a small laugh to try and mask how startled he was by Robert's sudden enthusiasm for his home village. It really _wasn't_ an exciting place at all, not when you'd lived there for over two decades and gotten used to the regular family feuds (that sometimes spilled into violence, but that had died down over the past couple of years).

"No, you're right," Robert gazed out through the window as if reminiscing over a fond memory. He smiled to himself, eyes still wandering over the skyline, "chances of that, ey?"

"Chances of what?"

"I grew up there!" Robert exclaimed, the most excitement Aaron had ever seen evoked by the subject of Emmerdale, "left like, what...ten...ten years ago? Never been back - Thursday'll be the first time in a long time," the 'never been back' was delivered with the slightest of a dark edge, one that made Aaron consider why he'd never returned. 'Murder' came to mind first, obviously, before 'family issues' or 'just didn't want to get stuck in a soul-draining farming community for the rest of his life'. Robert exhaled, "God...small world, isn't it?"

Aaron nodded, "suffocating."

He feigned disinterest, but as soon as the revelation had come to light, Aaron was ransacking his brain to try and work out who the hell this guy was. No one had ever mentioned a 'Robert' before - not to him anyway - but then again it was rare he spoke to anyone outside of his family. Even then, Dingles have eyes and ears everywhere in the village, they usually know things about people before they themselves are aware of it. It's virtually impossible someone could have fallen so far off the radar.

"Wait do you know Vic?" Robert asked, "Victoria, what is she now, Barton?"

It finally clicked. Victoria Sugden, Adam's wife who worked in the Woolpack kitchen with Marlon, Aaron's almost-girlfriend when he went through that horrible heterosexual phase, _did_ have a brother. There was Andy of course, but another name did occasionally seep into conversation between the two of them (and occasionally Diane, when she got involved). Every fleeting memory he had of hearing it was so passive he'd often presumed the person to whom it belonged was long dead, when in fact he was just hanging around clubs in Leeds and coming home to a million-pound flat every night.

Robert Sugden.

He didn't look like Aaron had expected him to. Granted, he hadn't given the subject much thought, but whenever the elusive third Sugden sibling was brought up he imagined a more muscular, dark-haired man. Not that Robert was skinny, he just didn't match up with Aaron's mental picture - and he was about as far away from dark-haired as a person could get. His accent was softer than those of his siblings, too, possibly the result of moving around a lot, or maybe just because he didn't spend his life on a farm in the middle of the Dales. It was clear he was a Yorkshireman, anyway, Aaron recalled briefly wondering if he would be a Geordie like Diane.

"I know Vic, yeah," Aaron said, like she was someone he'd only met once, "she's married to my best mate."

"Yeah," Robert's gaze returned to the window, "what's his name again?"

"Adam."

"Adam," he echoed, like he was feeling how the name felt on his tongue.

"It's weird, she's never mentioned you," Aaron didn't realise the potentially insensitive nature of his remark until it was too late. Not only that, it was an outright lie: Vic had mentioned him on multiple occasions, just not in entirely positive contexts, "what are you, like, her brother?"

"Yeah," as far as 'yeah's go, Aaron could rank that one in the top five saddest he'd heard in his life. Robert did his best to mask his disappointment, resuming his drumming pattern on the side of his coffee mug. He was silent for a moment, and Aaron was ready to switch to a less heavy topic of conversation, but was stopped when he made one last attempt, "she's seriously never mentioned me?"

"Not that I can remember," he couldn't help but feel guilty for creating family tensions before they had even reunited, but he wasn't going to backtrack now to save Robert's ego (was that harsh? It wasn't so self-important to think your own sister might have acknowledged your existence at some point). As the silence quickly became grating, Aaron raced to change the subject, "so Thursday...are you coming for the Christmas party then?"

"I am, yeah," Robert sounded excited by the prospect despite their exchange only a few moments ago, "why, are you going as well?"

Aaron sighed. It wasn't that he wished he _wasn't_ going, he wasn't one of these miserable guys who thought it was some sort of endearing trait to hate Christmas, but he could think of places he'd rather be. Maybe it was the fact he had no choice in attending that formed the mild sense of dread he experienced every time Thursday was mentioned, or maybe it was the fact he'd attended the previous six and knew what to expect: a multitude of drunk, middle aged women singing loudly amongst the cheap decorations that had been used year after year since long before he was born, a night that started off pleasant enough but always ended up with someone in tears on the benches outside. It was a nightmare, but it was tradition, and he really couldn't see it being Robert's kind of thing, "it's why I've got to get back, to help set it up."

"You'll be there though, right?" Robert's voice was entirely unreadable - the fact he couldn't tell if he was making light-hearted conversation or was genuinely hopeful of seeing him again sent Aaron into a state of mild panic.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he replied, in an almost theatrically sarcastic manner. Before he could stop himself, he added, "especially if you're there."

He hadn't changed his tone of voice when he said it, so there was a good chance he could play it off and as a joke (and convince himself it was just that should he ever choose to look back on this moment). No amount of sarcasm could distract him from how fast his heart was racing, however, and he felt as if he was struggling to keep up with it. The more he thought about it, the faster it pounded, and the greater the feeling of nausea in his stomach that could well just have been the dodgy drink. Maybe it would have been a blessing - he could concentrate more on not being sick and less on embarrassing himself in front of a man he definitely didn't fancy.

Robert met his eyes, staring into him with a smile and a hint of disbelief. Feeling compelled to stand his ground, Aaron started back, silently praying he hadn't gone completely red. They held their respective gazes for what felt like minutes, but in reality would have only been a few seconds, before Robert shook himself from the trance, flustered.

"Right," he said, in that loud voice people often used to break tension, "breakfast."

 

***

 

The bus swerved suddenly, throwing Aaron's head from where it rested on the window. As he heard the driver mutter something about a "bastard" over the horn, the culprit himself appeared on his side of the bus, sauntering down the road in a striking combination of washed out jeans and a navy blazer. The man's eyes followed the bus accusingly over his shoulder before disappearing out of sight, seemingly unfazed by his near-death experience.

It would be another fifteen minutes or so before they finally pulled up in Emmerdale, only because the traffic wasn't particularly bad and the driver definitely seemed like he needed to be somewhere. Though the previous near miss wasn't anything within his control, the journey so far had consisted of a lot of questionable manoeuvres and lane changes that some would consider reckless ("no bloody bus lanes outside the city," Aaron had overheard him complain to another middle-aged man in a leather jacket, "no one has any respect for timetables"). Somewhere along the way, the landscape had changed from suburban semi-detacheds to threadbare fields bordered by shrubbery and dotted with sheep. The crumbling dry-stone walls rushing past against the backdrop of slowly passing hills triggered harrowing memories of GCSE physics and awfully drawn animations demonstrating parallax - like the one Aaron had to endure before the fire alarm went off because Ruby in the year below had started a fire in the chemistry lab.

God, how he didn't miss high school.

He did miss Liv, his younger sister, who was currently in Ireland visiting her mother for the first week of the holidays. They took this bus together every so often, if the weather was bearable, for a Sunday afternoon out in town. Sometimes it would be as simple as wandering through shops for half an hour, finding a café down a cobbled side street to stop in before heading back. Other times they would carry on all the way to Roundhay Park, where Liv used her phone (and later the camera Chas got her for her birthday) to take artistic photographs of the flowerbeds. Aaron would lean over her shoulder on the ride home and watch as she scrolled through countless images of foxgloves and tulips, commenting that she had a real talent for it, and Liv always arguing it wasn't a real talent in the first place. It was ironic, he thought, that he took his sister all the way to Leeds to get her away from the mind-numbing dullness of the countryside, only for her to seek out nature among the concrete. She was also starting her GCSEs this year, which meant, as Aaron had persistently reminded her, she would have to make more of an effort to actually _turn up_ to lessons once in a while. She'd gotten better of late, blaming the fact history had "actually got a bit interesting" since they started World War One (but denying ever uttering those words every subsequent time Aaron brought it up). He hoped for her sake that parallax was taken off the syllabus, or that her school didn't at least leave pyromaniacs unattended in a room full of gas taps and Bunsen burners.

He would phone her tonight, he decided, just to make sure she was all right. There was no reason she shouldn't have been, aside from the fact she had admitted on more than one occasion that caring for her mother took it out of her - as it would any fifteen-year-old - and that, despite how much she loved Sandra, she couldn't help but feeling lonely. He knew too well how much a familiar voice could mean.

As they turned the corner into the village, the weak winter sun shone into the window and cast the interior of the bus in amber. Aaron squinted against its glare as he reached for the stop button, the deceleration of the bus swaying his balance as he stood.

 

***

 

Chas had always complained about Aaron slamming the door when he came in, and in retaliation he would blame its abnormal heaviness and the draft that pulled it shut. The house (if that is what it could be called, considering most of the building was taken up by the pub) was all really in need of a DIY job, not least the doors but also the bathroom, with only one out of four lights working, and the damp that was starting to become a problem upstairs. Being a mechanic, Aaron considered himself good enough at practical tasks, but since inadvertently pulling a cabinet down in the kitchen he had been banned from any sort of house renovation, so all he could do was quietly complain. The bang of the door behind him rattled through the hallway.

Traipsing into the front room and not meeting a single soul along the way, he called out a half-hearted "I'm back," and waited for a response. It took only a few short moments for signs of life to appear, in the form of a seemingly preoccupied "hi, love" from his mum upstairs (the echo of her voice suggested the attic). Cardboard boxes of varying sizes littered the floor around him, some already opened to reveal their contents of tinsel and novelty ornaments in the shapes of reindeer while others remained sealed with duct tape. Aaron didn't dare touch any of them - they were probably organised in a specific manner Chas was apparently still in the process of sorting. One in particular caught his eye, however. It was a small, A4-sized box resting on top of another, larger box, the flaps opened to display a crudely crafted felt angel ensnared in a tangle of gold beads. He pulled the decoration - red except for the pale pink face - from its container, turning it over in his hands. It was something he came across every few years, something he couldn't say he was particularly fond of but appreciated the sentimentality of nonetheless. A ribbon was tied around its silver pipe-cleaner halo with a label attached to the other end. One side was printed with the words 'Happy Christmas' and bordered with clip art of holly bows, the other had written on it, in teacher-neat handwriting, _'Aaron Livesy Dec 98'_. Its face was drawn on in blue marker pen dark enough to appear black at first glance - beady eyes adorned with three eyelashes on each above a thin smile that reached to almost either end of its head. He dropped the doll back into its box, the beads jangling upon impact.

He was about to turn around to climb the stairs and assist his mother when the glare of the television suddenly caught his attention. It had been on the whole time, as it usually was - so low it got absorbed into ambient background noise. One word had caught his attention and brought it into focus.

 _Dublin_.

As he walked around the front of the sofa to see the screen, the newsreader continued. It took Aaron another few seconds to tune into what the report was about.

_"...Downing Street has issued a statement in the past hour, stating that Britain stands with the EU in a promise to act with 'collective force' should the U.S. continue in their advance on Ireland. This comes two weeks after the former ally's invasion of Mexico and last week's advance on Cuba, which has thus far seen-"_

The screen cut to black suddenly, and Aaron turned around to see Charity setting down the remote on the armrest of the sofa, a dwindling glass of red wine in her other hand. They both stood staring each other down, as if waiting for the other to explain themselves.

"I was watching that," Aaron said, rather defensively.

Charity smiled sarcastically, raising her glass pointedly at him, "then let me summarise it for you: the world's going to shit, but Christmas isn't cancelled yet and the tree isn't going to put itself up," she paused for a moment, giving him a look of _'come on then'_ , before turning and strutting out to the bar as purposefully as she had entered, downing the last of her wine on the way.

Aaron loitered around the heap of boxes for a while, checking the contents of those that were already open: baubles, beads, tinsel, smaller baubles - but no tree. It was an ugly thing, so he remembered thinking year on year, a plastic assembly of multiple layers of branches that hardly even resembled a real fir. Chas had bought it because she didn't like the fact real trees shed needles everywhere, though it seemed a pointless effort as this artificial one did exactly the same, probably because it cost five pounds from Home Bargains. Perhaps it was a blessing then that Aaron couldn't locate any box long enough to house it.

"Charity," Aaron called, hesitating a moment for a response that didn't come, "the tree's not here."

He waited again, and was just about to take the silence as a cue to go looking for her when Charity reappeared, frustration plastered on her face and a fresh glass of wine in hand. She was wearing a jumper, he noticed, an off-white woollen thing with sparkly material sewn into it. It wasn't garish or abnormal at all, he just couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her in anything so casual.

Charity rolled her eyes at Aaron's incompetency, pausing too beside the boxes to consider the best course of action. She swayed back and forth ever so slightly as she did so, then kicked gently at the one closest to her, "untangle those," she ordered, not looking back at Aaron before she was away again.

The fairy lights came out in a tangled lump, glass bulbs tinted alternate red and yellow connected with bottle green wires to match the fake needles of the tree. Aaron tugged at either end of the mass, before deciding it probably a better idea to use the plug dangling at his feet as a starting point. Lights were the most beautiful part of the tree, he decided, but that beauty didn't half come with a price. In some places, the wires were bound so tightly they had become impossibly knotted, and Aaron didn't have the fingernails to pry them apart.

A pain struck suddenly in his head, causing his stomach to churn and reminding him he was very much still hungover. It would have usually worn off by now, especially after having something to eat, but it seemed this one was persistent (though he still failed to understand why, he hadn't drunk any more than he usually did). He pressed at his temples, stepping back to sit on the armrest of the sofa. In passing the fairy lights to one hand it was likely he'd tangled them even more, but that wasn't his greatest concern at the moment.

When he closed his eyes, he saw Robert's hair as it was illuminated the red, pink, and blue of the disco lights that flashed around him, casting shadows over his face. When he opened them, he saw his fist tangled in wires. Closed, he saw the newsreader's gaunt, expressionless complexion as he recited the words of government officials attempting to avert disaster. Open, he saw wires. Closed, he could just make out the movement of Robert's muscles under his white shirt that became translucent in the sunlight flooding through the bedroom window. Open, he saw tanks rolling through the streets of Dublin, and Liv standing in their firing line.


	2. Chapter 2

By nine, the pub had settled into a warmth that only ever seemed to emerge around Christmas - one that everybody, regular or otherwise, couldn't help but become absorbed into. The whole village and the next had descended on The Woolpack that Thursday evening, invited by word on the street or the posters garnishing every signpost and noticeboard in a five-mile radius. Charity had made a point of announcing to Chas and Aaron not only could she operate Microsoft Publisher, but that she had gone to great lengths to decide on the perfect font and colour scheme combination, and that she'd printed her handiwork off surplus to requirements by about a factor of ten.

They seemed to have had the desired effect. Aaron had never seen this many people standing crowded amongst the tables, any seating long since occupied despite Vic's best efforts to hurry as many spare chairs out from the back room as possible. Wandering among them, if wandering was achievable - without careful navigation it was easy to jostle someone's drink every time so much as a small step was taken - felt equally intimate as anonymous. People were so invested in their conversations they didn't appear to notice anyone else around them, yet spoke so loudly and with such enthusiasm that their sense of isolation was known only to themselves. _Careless speech_ , he thought, subsequently reminding himself it wasn't 1940. Nevertheless, the image of Dublin was still impressed into the back of his mind like the afterimage acquired after staring too long at a light, though the conversations that floated in and out of his earshot lacked any mention of the invasion. The two women immediately beside him flipped through conversation topics in a manner distinct of people not familiar with each other, their small talk ranging from the finale of a thriller series on Channel 4 to the last time they saw a hedgehog in their garden. Hadn't they heard? It riddled every newspaper aisle in the country, it was shone in your face every time you turned on the television. ' _America invades Ireland_ '. They had heard, undeniably, unavoidably, but they chose to act as if it wasn't happening. After all, it was Christmas - people craved high spirits and good will, even if that good will was merely an act. Perhaps, then, the warmth he found himself shrouded in was holographic - like those electric fires displayed on LED screens that hung on the white walls of rich people's homes. Perhaps the minds of the clusters he meandered through, two pints delicately balanced in either hand, were not whirring with thoughts of Everton's performance yesterday or their experiences with suburban wildlife as their words would suggest. Or perhaps he was overthinking the entire thing and the majority of the people in the room either thought international politics and inconsequential to their daily lives, or had come here to take their mind off the subject and were thus far succeeding.

As he approached the booth furthest from the bar, uttering a couple of apologies as he ushered those loitering nearby out of his way, he caught the tail end of a conversation he'd left behind. Adam was sitting on one side, his wedding ring flickering like a candle flame when it caught the light as he gestured eccentrically with his hands over the table. Vic and Marlon countered him, the former poised as if ready to snap back with a counter argument the second her husband paused to take breath.

"-can't stop feeding people for the sake of a couple of dolphins," Adam's hands relaxed once he had concluded his point, only then looking up to notice Aaron's presence as he set one of the pints in front of him, "cheers."

Vic, on the other hand, was entirely consumed by their debate, her eyes never so much as glancing in Aaron's direction as he reached across the table to grab one of the coasters tucked underneath the menu at the far end, "but it's not just dolphins! There's turtles and sharks and, God- even the fish themselves suffer because of it. Tuna, bluefin tuna - they reckon they'll all go extinct if we carry on at the rate we are-" she finally turned to the man sitting across from her, "Aaron. Overfishing. Problem or not?"

Aaron faltered, caught off guard by his unexpected inclusion and the sudden realisation he had never pondered this question in his life, "er…I suppose the 'over' bit tells you it's not that great."

Vic promptly shot Adam a satisfied expression, "exactly."

Before Adam had a chance to draw out the subject for any longer than it had been going (which, considering how the volume of people Aaron had been required to push through had lengthened the time he was absent, must have been quite a while), Marlon made haste to switch to a completely unrelated topic. He turned to her and inquired quietly, as if it was an extremely personal question, "is your brother still coming, Vic?"

Aaron immediately felt his body become hot with anxiety, only just preventing himself from snapping his gaze instinctively to Marlon for daring to remind him that such a man exists. He hadn't mentioned a word of his night with Robert to anyone - least of all his sister. Even to Adam, he had only offered snippets of information, and only because he persisted (as he so often did). To his knowledge, the only details his friend had of what had happened to him that night since they were separated were vague and disjointed: he'd gone back to a nameless man's house and ended up staying over. Vic had asked him about it, presumably after Adam had brought it up (deliberately or otherwise) in conversation -  it followed that she caught him on his return from a walk on the hillside to press him about it. Not with any malicious intent, but because she had considered herself a wingman to a man nearly a year and a half single and was excited by the prospect of that finally coming to an end. Lying to Vic had always been one of the most painful things to do, but there was no good to come out of her knowing who the man was, so his identity was to remain a firm secret. He scratched the pads of his fingers against the varnished wood of the table, hoping none of those around him would notice.

"Yeah, he's on his way," Vic gestured with her phone to indicate Robert had texted to confirm this. Her eyes flicked to Aaron, who was busying himself in conjuring up excuses to disappear before her brother's arrival, "you haven't met him yet, have you?"

Aaron swallowed, feigning thoughtfulness before concluding, "don't think so."

The toilet excuse was too obvious, and only gave him a brief window of absence before he'd be obliged to show his face again. If anything, it would make matters worse, as he'd be the centre of attention upon returning and likely introduced to Robert on his own rather than as a group. He considered texting his mum to get her to call for his assistance in the back room, but that would only lead to endless interrogation and, because Chas had a tendency to be unrelenting in such situations, he would be forced to let slip the fact he had slept with Vic's brother who had only now made his first appearance in the village for ten years and who, judging by Adam's opinion of him, seemed to bear a rather unscrupulous past.

His friend had his eyes fixed on the bubbles that ascended through the amber liquid in front of him, sporting an expression that half appeared to brace for a strong reaction to what he was about to say, and half gave off an air of smugness, "don't think you're missing out on much, mate."

"Adam," Vic sounded more disappointed than frustrated, and it was obvious they had already rehearsed this exact conversation a thousand times before, "he's come along way-"

Adam scoffed, "like twenty miles down the road."

"He's putting in the effort."

"He's had years to make that effort, though."

"Yes, well…" Vic seemed at a loss for words. Somewhere, deep down, they all knew that same thought lingered in her mind, "at least he's finally done it. Everyone deserves a second chance."

The temper cleared from Adam's eyes. He seemed resigned, though not convinced, by his wife's justification, perhaps aware it was not wise for him to stand between her and her family, even as a protective gesture. "He doesn't deserve you," he said softly, with more than a hint of admiration.

Vic placed her hand over his where it rested on the table, smiling, "and neither do you."

Adam huffed something about knowing that well enough already, in equally an endearing manner as a self-depreciative one, and the pair soon faded into sickeningly sweet sentimentalities that Aaron tuned out of instinctively. Marlon excused himself quietly, something to do with food preparation, and Vic offered her assistance but he insisted he was more than capable alone.

With the multitudes of people surrounding them only growing larger, it was impossible to hear the creak of the pub door as it was pushed open - hesitantly to avoid hitting anyone on the other side and to allow time for a last-minute boycott. Aarons sight, too, impeded him, their booth blind to the entrance even on days the Woolpack lay silent and empty. Anyone wanting to catch their attention would have to walk almost directly in front of the table to make themselves known, and if it was him they sought after specifically they would have to add tapping his shoulder to snap his mind away from wherever it had drifted.

It had drifted, much to his displeasure, back to the streets of Dublin. He hadn't phoned Liv as he had intended to, despite the growing anxiety he felt every time another update was fed to him through the News at Six. Guilt too festered in his gut whenever another evening came and went without him succeeding in summoning the courage to pick up the phone, afraid Sandra's voice would instead grace his ears to inform him of the unspeakable - or worse, no voice at all but an automated answer machine. There was no mention yet of any fatalities, or indeed any violence at all as the invasion got underway. No need for it, so the images returning from the city would suggest. Trucks adorned with the stars and stripes and occupied by smiling soldiers rolled towards the camera and onwards, some of their passengers stealing glances in its direction as if it was some alien contraption. Their faces were clean, plastic, reminiscent of uncanny caricatures used in advertisements for car insurance or gym clothing, kitted out in pristinely ironed khaki and carbines. Those who walked by - old men in flat caps tugging along their border terriers, mothers with hands full of pushchairs and car keys - reacted to their presence no more than they would any other traffic, continuing about their daily woes as if the camera's lens was fitted with some sort of filter through which ordinary cars and vans were transformed into light armoured vehicles. A woman they interviewed the night before, a Guardian journalist or something similar, had called it a modern-day _Anschluss_. Aaron had to google what that meant.

Unfortunately for him, he received nothing as merciful as a tap on the shoulder. No warning at all, in fact, until it was too late to make his escape. All he got was Vic's relief-stricken exclamation, one that ensnared him like the coarse wire of an industrial net choked her overfished bluefin tuna. 

"Robert!"

His vision was suddenly a blur of Vic leaping up from opposite him to throw her arms around the man standing at the head of the table. Robert appeared entirely unexpectant of it, hesitating for a brief moment with his arms frozen mid-air before returning the embrace. If he had noticed Aaron sitting barely two feet away from him (which he almost certainly had, unless he had somehow blinded himself since their last meeting), he made no indication of it, keeping his focus entirely on his sister, who was already ensuring that he had enjoyed a safe journey and had no trouble finding his way to the pub. A silent panic consumed Aaron then, after realising there were only two outcomes to the situation: he would either force conversation (if so, what about? Would he pretend this was the first time he'd ever laid eyes on the long-lost Sugden sibling, perhaps even make a joke about it? Would he mention their meeting at the club but nothing else? Make a joke about that as well?), or abstain from acknowledgement entirely. Both appeared to him as equally horrifying ways to spend the next twenty-to-thirty minutes.

Aaron reached for his pint, taking generous gulps as Vic introduced her brother to Adam, the two men reaching over him across the table to shake hands.

"Alright," Adam's greeting could have almost been considered pleasant to anyone who hadn't heard him only five minutes prior. The controlled confidence in his posture, not so assertive at a glance, was to Aaron's trained eyes something similar to a detective introducing himself to a criminal mastermind he hadn't yet the evidence to convict. Robert appeared to notice it too, daring to offer nothing more than an uneasy smile for fear anything else would provoke Adam to bite his arm off.

They maintained their stand-off for a fraction of a second longer than was considered comfortable, and even the ever-oblivious Vic became eager to move on. She turned to him, arm extended, "…and this is Aaron."

It was then, and only then, that Aaron dared look up at the figure looming over him. Robert appeared just as he had remembered him; clean-shaven, what little sunlight could be salvaged at this time of year revealing a scattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. That, along with the deep maroon shade of his blazer, gave him a similarly warm glow to his surroundings. Aaron did his best to smile politely, accompanied by a small nod and echoing Adam's one-word greeting. Unlike his friend, he managed to produce a quiet "hi" from Robert in response, which felt as if it had thrown the rhythm of the encounter off entirely.

The inevitable silence crept in. Aaron shifted against the leather seat, his clothes all of a sudden feeling clammy and cold with sweat. The air was stifling to say the least, what with all the bodies and their radiation of heat on top of the central heating that would have been set high to combat the December chill, it made it difficult to breathe if you were to concentrate on it for too long, so he tried not to. Instead, he looked to Adam (who, like him, was making no indication of breaking the tension), then Vic, who caught his eyes and seemed to instantly come to the realisation it was her move to make.

"So, Robert," she said, Robert turning perhaps too quickly as if relieved to be involved again, "what is it you do again, finance or something? Sorry, I know you told me before.”

"Financial management, yeah," his confident tone was juxtaposed with hunched shoulders and folded arms, as if he was cold, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his elbow, "soul draining."

The last part was directed more to his wider audience, but neither man gave any sort of reply. Adam was watching him, at least, a mildly amused expression on his face. Aaron didn't dare peel his eyes from the table. After a short pause, Vic once again filled in when the other two missed their cue, "really that bad?"

"No, not really," he forced a laugh, "the money's worth it."

Adam reached for his pint, gesturing with it to his wife but his eyes staying firmly on Robert's, "keep that in mind when he gets you a shabby Christmas present."

The remark was light-hearted, Aaron even huffing a laugh in response to prove he was involved in the conversation, but Robert didn't seem to take it as such. Aaron could practically see him bite his tongue, his jaw clenching and unclenching, but remaining painfully diplomatic. It was a shame, he thought maybe a good old-fashioned pub fight was the only thing that could make this party worth coming to, especially if it saw Robert's annoyingly pretty face kicked in.

The man in question collected himself, turning again to his sister, "speaking of presents, I've got something for Sarah in my car, should I bring it through?"

Sarah was his niece, Debbie and Andy's daughter, who tended to be kept firmly distanced from the pub for her own good. An exception was made for the party - she'd even excitedly assisted Faith and Debbie in hanging the foil bunting over the bar and throwing tree-shaped confetti over some of the tables. Her father, now Aaron had him in his mind, had not shown his face all day and he wondered if that was because of Robert.

"Yeah! Sure," Vic seemed to compensate enthusiasm on behalf of all three of them, "what'd you get her?"

Robert hesitated a second, eyeing both Adam and Aaron (though he didn't look, he could feel it) before making the decision to escape, "come and see."

He barely gave her a chance to agree before turning and making his way to the door. Vic followed in his wake, close behind so that the path through the crowd didn't close between them. Once they were firmly out of sight, Aaron was able to release the breath he wasn't even aware he was holding. Strangers it was, then. He would have liked to be disappointed, possibly even angered by the fact Robert had acted like his was a face he'd never come across in his life, but none such emotion would come as he was all too aware he had done exactly the same. The remark he'd blurted out on Sunday, the half-joke, rattled around in his mind.

_"Wouldn't miss it for the world, especially if you're there."_

He pictured Robert's unreadable expression, his eyes, caught off guard, flickering with something so slight it was impossible to distinguish between fluster and repulsion. He would like to have recorded the reaction so that he might rewind and replay it, unpicking every frame, every pixel, for an insight into the man's mind. It felt obsessive.

It was Adam's low, careful voice that bought Aaron to the realisation he'd been staring at the point where the crowd had engulfed the pair. His friend spoke seriously but failing to stifle a smirk, "he's the bloke from town, isn't he?" When Aaron didn't reply, only turning away in more than moderate embarrassment, his amusement only grew, "oh mate, that's awkward."

Aaron wiped away the condensation on his pint glass, still unable to look at anything else. In any other situation, he would be able to see through Adam's winding-up as just that, but now his skin crawled with agitation every second the subject was dragged out longer than necessary. He needed to get away, but not before asserting his irritation, "don't say anything, I don't think he's out to his family."

"I won't, I wouldn't," Adam's tone managed to flow from reassurance to mild offence in four words. Aaron didn't give into it. He didn't even have the energy to feel bad for giving his best friend the cold shoulder, using the savoured silence instead to check the time. He felt unusually tired for five to ten, the only thing stopping him from calling it a night and slamming his bedroom door behind him like a moody child was the knowledge that Adam would only try and follow him. For all his confidence and extroverted mannerisms, he didn't fare well on his own in large crowds, which meant all too often Aaron being burdened with the task of supervising him until he eventually found his feet and sailed away alone, Aaron lingering behind just in case. When set out like that, he realised it made Adam look like more effort than he was worth, but the reality was that most days Aaron didn't know where he'd be without him.

Adam stared absently at the thin disc of lager at the bottom of his glass, rolling the end against the table, "he'll have got her something pricey, you know. Sarah," he shook his head, "he just strikes me as the kind of person to chuck money at things instead of putting any time into them."

Aaron shrugged, "probably."

Silence faded in again, descending like a night fog. After a short while, Adam set his glass upright all of a sudden, turning to face Aaron and leaving a second to take him in before enquiring, "was he alright?"

Aaron snapped his head back at him, "what?" When Adam didn't back down, only continued staring, he looked away, mumbling something that sounded like, "yes, he was alright."

The music playing from the speakers that provided his soundtrack for the night seemed to be getting louder as time went on, so much so that now it could almost be heard over the sea of chatter where only an hour ago no one would have even known it was playing. It was Slade currently, next would be Shakin' Stevens. Chas had played this album so much every year he'd memorised the track listing. A bellowing laughter erupted from the other end of the pub, a group of middle-aged men he'd never seen before standing near the bar cracking jokes about whatever farmers joke about.

"Do you…fancy him?" Adam's voice caught him off guard yet again. With all his slipping in and out of concentration, maybe ten o'clock wasn't so late to go to bed after all.

Sincerely wishing Adam hadn't asked that question so he didn't have to think about it, he grumbled in response, "will you piss off? And no, I don't _fancy_ him.”

"Good, cause he seems like a right prick. "

"You've known him for two-" Aaron was cut short when he caught sight of Vic meandering over to the table - a large, box-shaped gift in her hands and her brother in tow. It was probably for the best, any longer and it could be said he was defending him.

"You don't know what Andy's told me about him," Adam didn't lower his voice in light of his wife's arrival, either because he hadn't yet realised she was in earshot or because he didn't much care.

If Vic had heard his remark, she didn't say anything, only pushed Sarah's present to the far end of the seat and sat down beside it. It took up about the same amount of space as a person sitting there would, wrapped perfectly in pastel-blue paper adorned with tiny holographic stars that scattered the colours of the rainbow under the light. Anything could have been underneath it, from a paint set to a laptop, though Adam probably wasn't far from the truth to say no expense was spared - that perfect balance of financial effort and impersonality for a niece he had never met. By the sound of it, if Andy had his way, he wouldn't be meeting her at all.

Before either of them could inquire as to his whereabouts, Robert emerged into view, wrapping up a conversation with a blonde woman Aaron knew as a regular - one of the few actual residents of the village he'd seen all night. He parted ways with her just before reaching the table, his valediction edged with the same flirtatious confidence he'd sported with the woman in the club.

"You see everyone in this place," he seemed bewildered by the experience, elaborating even though it was clear no one asked him to, "me and Bex went to uni together," he glanced over his shoulder to see where the woman in question had got to, but she was now nowhere to be seen, "haven't seen her in years."

Aaron couldn't remember ever having a lengthy conversation with Rebecca himself. In fact, he was only aware of her presence in the village because of the many times he'd emerged from the back room to find her and Debbie deep into a rather animated conversation over the bar. Any great details about her life remained somewhat of a mystery; he knew she owned Home Farm and ran some sort of estate business from there, and that she usually ordered gin and tonic, but beyond that he was utterly clueless. She was lovely nonetheless, if a bit posh - always smiling in her outfits that probably cost more than his entire wardrobe and never a bad word to say about anyone.

He didn't like the fact Robert called her "Bex". It was an oddly abnormal informality to come out of his mouth, and from his limited experience he thought Rebecca far too nice to be so close to someone like him. The thought made him realise he'd been sucked into the incessant mistrust of a man he hardly knew for reasons he was even less familiar with. Why shouldn't they be friends? What was it about Robert's character (because surely mere rumour couldn't spark the reaction he seemed to receive from just about everyone he interacted with) that was so discomforting? Something bubbled underneath the surface, something unhinged, like a dark secret or the teetering edge of a nervous breakdown. Along with the ambiguity surrounding his initial departure from Emmerdale, Aaron suddenly realised there was something very important about Robert he didn't know, and it wasn't that he'd gone to university with Rebecca White.

 

***

 

It was about another hour later when his mother called his name.

The crowds had subsided considerably, and his friends had drifted off to wherever they found entertainment, leaving him lingering around the outskirts, not uncomfortably excluded but content in watching the world roll past around him. Currently, Vic was balancing two conversations: one organising an April holiday with Finn and Tracy, the three of them huddled around a table comparing Mediterranean destinations and periodically yelling in excitement at suggestions of what they might do there, the other involved occasionally saving Robert from Charity's relentless attempts to get him to perform a karaoke rendition of Fairytale of New York. Her husband had joined the other Barton brothers and a rather disgruntled Andy (who apparently had been showing his face all night, just not around them, for obvious reasons) at the bar, low, accusative voices floating occasionally from their direction in a manner that would be considered gossiping had they been women. Aaron had considered joining them, if only for somewhere to be, but he was all too aware that Ross and Andy didn't think too highly of him and Adam, for all his virtues, wouldn't defend him against their scrutiny. He found himself at the other end of the bar - the end nearest the door - watching with amusement as his cousin further antagonised helpless Robert, who appeared closer and closer to giving in. Any state of great intoxication refused to hit him, despite having lost count of how many pints he'd had, and he wondered if Charity was deliberately watering them down so he would be sober enough to remember what a terrible singer Robert was and be put off him for good. He hadn't told her, obviously, but she had a certain intuition, seemingly omniscient like some sort of mischievous spirit. She was a nightmare to live with.

He didn't hear her the first time. In fact, he only knew she had called him twice because the second time was raised with irritation, and he turned to see Chas standing in the doorway to the back room, moving her head to beckon him inside. His stomach turned with anxiety, unable to find any sort of wrongdoing he needed scolding for recently, except the obvious: she knew about Robert, and she wasn't best pleased. Not that such a reaction was normal from his mother whenever he slept with someone - the ones he did tell her about she would often judge herself, commenting that he'd done well for himself whenever he showed her a select few photos from their Instagram. Aaron knew, however, what the Dingles and seemingly everyone in the village thought of Robert Sugden, and expected nothing less than the 'stay away from that trouble maker' lecture he secretly wished someone would give him. Sliding off the barstool and onto his feet, he suddenly realised he was indeed a lot more drunk than he'd previously thought.

Chas had disappeared before he reached the door, so he continued into the back room, finding her hunched over on the sofa with her elbows resting on her knees. The room was dimly lit, only the glow of the electric candles on the mantlepiece and the fairy lights wound around the tree in the corner to guide Aaron over the now empty boxes that still hadn't returned to the attic. There was an untouched bottle of wine sitting on the coffee table in front of her, an orange raffle ticket sellotaped to its neck. 276. She sat up on seeing him, only able to hold his questioning gaze for a few moments before looking away again.

"Your uncle Cain's just had a call from Zak," she explained, her matter-of-fact tone only thinly veiling the way her voice quivered, "you've seen on the news...what's happening in Ireland."

Aaron's chest grew tight. He wanted to move to sit next to his mother but he found his body frozen where he stood beside the cabinet, "yeah, why, what's he said?"

The murmur of noise that flowed in from the bar only feet away did nothing to penetrate the silence. Every moment longer Chas drew it out, like the anticipation of a talent show announcement, Aaron could feel the panic squeezing tighter around his ribcage. Her words, when they finally came, did little to subdue it, "they invaded Dublin yesterday..." she paused, taking breath, "...and your sister-"

"Is she alright?"

"She's fine, she's fine. That's what he was phoning about," Chas finally looked up at her son, taking in his frantic expression with a sigh, "she's gone to live with them."

A cheer erupted from out front. Aaron felt the grip of anxiety release him momentarily only to be replaced by bewilderment and a thousand questions forming in his head, "in Scotland?"

Chas nodded, "it's the only place she'll be safe. They reckon the Americans will land here in the next couple of days. They're taking farms in Ireland for...supplies, I suppose - people are worried they'll do the same over here."

Aaron pushed his weight off the cabinet he had been leaning on, a sense of urgency rising, "what do we do? Are we leaving?"

"You are."

"What?" He didn't mean to raise his voice, but the emotion took hold and he made no effort to control it, "no way, I can't-"

"Aaron," she cut him off firmly, "Cain found a car for you, a four by four..." she waved her hand, "thing. You're taking it up to Aviemore tomorrow."

 _Tomorrow_. He brought his hands to his head, his ability to move suddenly returning but only in the form of pacing the room. There was so much he wanted to ask, to protest, but none of it would form on his tongue, his mind an indecipherable haze. He shook his head, huffed a laugh of disbelief, "this is..."

"I know it's a lot to take in, but you need to be safe. And Liv needs you with her," Chas sounded entirely convinced by her justification, but Aaron knew there was something else she wasn't telling him. She was far too calm, having already reacted to the situation in her own private space and time. For some strange reason, Aaron felt angry at her, for her complicity. It was denial on his half, of course, she hadn't had to comply to anyone's plan but her own.

"What about you?" He asked, "why can't you come?"

"We have things to sort out here before we can leave, but I promise we'll be right behind you," she watched as he wandered behind her to collapse into one of the chairs at the table, hand over his face, "I'm so sorry it's come to this, love. This is the last thing I wanted to do," when the response she waited for didn't come, she tried a lighter approach, "take Adam with you."

Aaron slid his hands down his face, folding his arms over the table and shook his head, "he won't leave Vic. Or his mum."

Chas stood, walking over to Aaron, and placed a hand on his shoulder, "it'll only be for a couple of days, we'll be with you again before you know it. I promise."

 

***

 

The night was clear, moonless, and cold. No covering of cloud remained to trap the day's heat, the wind was pricked with a chill that made Aaron feel as if nothing separated him from the freezing expanse of the universe before him. Laid bare were countless suns, some millions of times the size of our own, some long dead, all reduced to pinpricks of light - needle holes in black fabric hung over a lamp. Venus hung low over the moors, as if some holy stable should reside there. Beyond the dampened noise from the walls of the building behind him, the village lay in as deadly quiet as the hills surrounding it, and as the soundless cosmos above it, not even the occasional bleating of a lost sheep that sometimes disturbed his sleep broke the silence. Like the stars, the Woolpack was a beacon of light and activity in an otherwise lifeless valley shrouded in darkness. It was the perfect place for him to be alone.

It turned out Robert was a good singer, after all. Not fantastic by any means, but good. Aaron had only caught the end of their performance, by which time a small audience had gathered and blocked his direct view from behind the bar, where he caught glimpses of his and Charity's faces as they flickered through gaps over people's shoulders. Like seemingly all things with Robert, his confidence grew exponentially the longer he was immersed in it, and towards the end of the song any shred of self-consciousness had long since dissipated. The only knock he suffered, and only for a second or two, was when he spied Aaron through the crowd, his eyes resting on him momentarily as " _can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you_ " fell thoughtlessly from his mouth. He seemed ruffled, but maybe only to Aaron's eyes, who spent the next five minutes thinking over the romantic clichés he could conjure out of those lyrics.

The door of the pub struggled open, a breeze of noise flowing through before it swung shut again. When Aaron turned out of pure curiosity, he expected to see the silhouette of a stranger pulling up their coat against the cold, out for a smoke or, like him, solitude. What he didn't expect was Robert making purposeful pace towards him, too fast for him to escape.

"Where've you been?" He sounded like he was thriving off some sort of rush. Not substance induced this time, just a happiness he wasn't used to, "I've been looking for you for ages."

Aaron was taken aback, to say the least. For the whole night Robert had avoided making so much as eye contact with him, and now he was expected to believe the man had committed time to actively seeking him out? Something in him would feel cruel dampening Robert's high spirits, however, and didn't have the energy to be angry, "out here," he spoke as Robert came around the front of the bench to sit beside him. Unlike Aaron, who seated himself sensibly on the lower tier of wood constructed for that purpose, he felt the need to sit on the table, feet resting on the seat so Aaron would have to look up at him. Surely enough, Aaron made the mistake of meeting his inquisitive stare, his expression as painfully unreadable as always, "I can't tell if you're drunk or not."

"Only on Christmas spirit," he paused momentarily, thinking about it, before adding, "and tequila, what's up?"

Aaron considered, and only for a split second, telling the truth. After all, it was possible talking to someone about what he had been recently propositioned with would do him some good. It seemed too much of a personal thing to bring up, however, even in passing, and he wasn't sure how he would explain a situation he was still trying to wrap his head around. He sighed, "nothing, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," he offered Robert a reassuring smile, regretting immediately showing any sign of weakness, "it's not...it's nothing."

Robert gave him a disbelieving look, then pushed himself down from his table top perch to sit at Aaron's level. If they weren't uncomfortably close before, the were undoubtedly now. Their knees were pressed together, and Robert didn't seem to notice as a few drops of his drink splashed over Aaron's trousers when he passed it over - some sort of peace offering. Hesitating at first, Aaron accepted the glass from Robert's hand, their fingers brushing as the exchange was made. Its appearance was deceptive, and Aaron must have grimaced when the bitter, burning liquid hit the back of his throat because Robert sniggered, holding his hand out to take the drink back from him.

"You know," Aaron cleared his throat, reminded why he avoided drinking spirits, "the point of mixing coke with vodka is to hide the taste of the vodka."

Robert shrugged, "I don't mind it."

He didn't mind the taste of bleach. This man was definitely ticking the boxes for a fully-fledged psychopath - no wonder the whole village was wary of him. As if to prove his point, Robert took the liberty of downing the rest of his drink, which had still been half full, and setting the empty glass on the table between them.

Aaron looked back out into the abyss. The longer he stared at one point in the sky, the more illuminated it became, single stars morphing into clusters, empty space giving way to flickers of light. Liv had tried to point out constellations to him once, and while he couldn't map the celestial sphere to the same degree of accuracy as his sister, he knew the basics. The front of the Plough points to the North Star - a rather dim, unremarkable sight despite its important-sounding title. He could feel Robert's eyes on him, though whether it was because he wanted to say something or just uninhibited drunken admiration was debatable.

He caved in, the moment getting the better of him, "Robert?"

"Mm?"

"Do you fancy me?"

Robert laughed, "do I fancy you?" He waited as if expecting Aaron to take it back in embarrassment (something he was very much on the cusp of doing), but Aaron still didn't dare look at him, allowing Robert to make that conclusion for himself, "yeah. Yeah, sure, I do. Why?"

Aaron looked down to his hands, "I thought maybe...you found it awkward, me being here."

"It's your pub."

"It's my mum's pub."

Robert continued to act oblivious, "why would it be awkward?"

"Because-" Aaron didn't know exactly how to phrase 'you're already part of some long-running village scandal and you've been ignoring me all night so I presumed it wasn't the kind of thing you wanted waving in front of your estranged family of ten years' in a way that wouldn't cause offence, "I dunno! You don't like me and I'm still hanging around."

"Aaron," Robert's voice softened, "if anything, I'm the one doing the hanging around." He shifted his body around so he was fully facing Aaron, resting his arm on the table, "I do like you, alright? And I'm glad I saw you again."

Aaron swallowed, his heart accelerating the longer he continued to put off turning away from Robert's stare. The wind had died completely, and without it the air hung still and heavy despite the cold. Even the murmur of the pub seemed to dissipate, though Aaron was the only one holding his breath. In the moment before he leaned in, Robert looked as if he'd been stripped of all his confidence - not in a shy or nervous manner, but sensitive, vulnerable - and Aaron only caught a glimpse of it before he shut his eyes. The kiss was slow, though it took him a second to reciprocate, the bitter taste of vodka on Robert's mouth lingering long after he pulled away. Neither of them went far, their foreheads barely inches from each other.

"Jesus..." Aaron turned his head away, though didn't compromise on distance, "I'm twenty-five and I'm getting with people outside pubs like a bloody teenager."

"Blame it on the Christmas spirit," Robert leant back in for another kiss, this time bringing his hand up to the back of Aaron's neck. Once again, Aaron pulled away prematurely, and Robert wasn't one to miss it, "there's something else wrong, I can tell."

Aaron shook his head, sitting up so he was out of Robert's reach, "it's nothing-"

"You can tell me, you know," Robert placed his hand on Aaron's thigh, a gesture he expected to make him uncomfortable but, to his surprise, gave way to a strange rush of reassurance, "I know you've only known me for like, less than a week, but I can still listen."

The tanks were rolling in, a parade of them down O'Connell Street as far as the eye could see. It wouldn't be long before the same precession occupied The Headrow, and soon enough the shadowed village road that stretched out beside them. Ross had been driving through Catterick the day before last, so he'd overheard him explain to Adam at the bar, where the road to the garrison and barracks had been cordoned off to the public. Army trucks rolled through the streets and the _tanks turning_ signs up on the moors only now seemed necessary. Aaron could feel tears forming as he offered Robert only a defeated look, to which Robert held out his arm and pulled him into his side. Aaron rested his head on Robert's shoulder, calmed if only marginally by the warmth he radiated.

"I'm going up to Scotland tomorrow," he explained, realising how mundane his troubles sounded when worded like that, "I'm _evacuating_ to Scotland tomorrow."

"Evacuating?"

"My little sister...she's been in Dublin since the start of the school holidays, with her mum, and yesterday...everything that's going on over there..." Aaron's voice must have cracked, because Robert squeezed his shoulder gently in support. He felt as if he should have been embarrassed when the tears finally fell from his eyes, "she got out before they invaded, she's...my uncle Zak, he's got this farm up in the Highlands, like thirty miles out of Inverness. She's up there with them, where she's safe."

He felt the vibrations of Robert's voice through his body when he spoke, his voice contrastingly calm and steady, "and you're going to join her?"

"That's the plan," he wiped his eyes on his jumper sleeve, "I didn't even find out she was over here until tonight."

"How many of you are going?"

"Just me. I've not really been given much of a choice," he let out a bitter laugh despite himself, "and I fucking hate driving."

Robert didn't respond to his half-joke. He seemed too wrapped up in concern to do anything but ask questions, "is there not anyone who can go with you?"

Aaron shrugged, "don't see why they'd want to. Unless you fancy a holiday."

"I think long drives up to Scotland to escape the threat of war are more of a third date activity, to be honest," Robert said, allowing a moment of silence to fall between them before adding, "seriously though, if you really don't want to go on your own-"

Aaron pulled himself away enough to give Robert an incredulous look, "no. God, no, I was joking," and he had been - completely, more or less. The serious prospect of Robert accompanying him hadn't even crossed his mind up until that point, though in all fairness the whole affair wasn't something he'd taken into much consideration in the first place.

Robert did his best to shake it off, but there was an (albeit fleeting) hint of disappointment in his voice, "yeah, of course."

He settled back into Robert's embrace, now comfortable enough to do that, apparently, "I mean, you've got your family here, you hardly see them as it is. And like you said, I've only known you a few days...you could be a serial killer."

"Or a car thief."

"Or an American spy. See, I just can't trust you."

The pub door opened again, and Robert turned at the sound where Aaron didn't respond. It wouldn't have been fantastic for someone he knew to see him getting so close to the man everyone seemed to hate, not that it was any of their business, but ultimately he didn't particularly care. Robert, on the other hand, he imagined cared a little more, which was why Aaron waited before the click of heels against tarmac was out of earshot before he continued, "it would be mental though, right? If you came with me."

Robert's eyes were still where the figure had vanished into the darkness of the street, "you're thinking through this a lot for someone who was joking."

"I know, I'm just..." Aaron trailed off, aware he would only be proving that point if he dug for more excuses, "no. It was stupid. Can we just forget I ever asked?"

Robert rested his head on top of Aaron's, "yeah, yeah sure."


	3. Chapter 3

Aaron planned to set off around eleven, a seven-hour journey (depending on the traffic) getting him to Aviemore by the evening. Packing had proven nearly impossible - only then had he realised he had no idea what to bring on a trip of indefinite length, lading the case with just about everything he set his hands on from a half-empty box of teabags to a wind-up torch. The second attempt resulted in a much lighter load: a week's worth of clothing, a few travel-size toiletries (Charity would kill him if he took the toothpaste), phone charger, towel, and a couple of books. Not that he read that much, but the isolated location of Zak and Lisa's farm suggested the internet would be sluggish if not absent entirely. He would need some form of entertainment, even if that entertainment was a ragged copy of _Catch-22_ he'd forced himself to endure at least twice for no reason other than to reinforce his opinion that it was disjointed and pretentious. Standing back from the zipped suitcase, which appeared to him as surprisingly empty, a brief sense of accomplishment washed over him, though it never managed to dislodge the lingering dread clawing at his insides with every minute the clock on his bedside table crept closer to 11:00.

The previous night was all too vivid for his liking, though it wasn't his order to depart he wished he could forget as much as embarrassing himself in front of Robert. After their heart-to-heart outside the Woolpack, the one where Aaron made the ludicrous suggestion Robert join him on his adventure and sobbed all over his lovely maroon blazer, Victoria had appeared to whisk her brother away back home, smiling at Aaron and informing him it had gone midnight and everyone was getting kicked out. Robert had parted with a friendly pat on the shoulder and the promise that "if you ever need to talk, Aaron, you know where to find me," before turning to catch up with his sister, shoulders hunched against the winter chill. Aaron watched them as far as the moonlight gave them away, darkness and distance eventually concealing their figures. He sighed, looked up again to Polaris - glow softened now by wisps of cloud, and made his way inside.  

His mum had made him a cooked breakfast - an apology of sorts, both for burdening him with the news at such short notice and for not discussing it since. The smell greeted him as he descended the stairs, slightly overdone bacon merging with toast and beans, and the vision of an inmate on death row preparing to eat their final meal flickered through his mind. Images of death considered, Aaron wasn't all that surprised to see his uncle sitting at the other end of the kitchen table, engrossed in the Mirror's sport section. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the front-page headline before the newspaper was set down face-first and Cain diverted his attention to the newest arrival to the room.  

"Afternoon," he sounded amused by Aaron's presence, making a quick but poignant glance to the clock on the wall, "thought you were meant to be away by eleven."

Aaron took the seat opposite him, and found himself unconsciously following his glance. It was half past ten, "I am. I've already packed. Said my goodbyes."

If 'goodbyes' were the text he had sent to Adam at around quarter to one that morning - a rambling, slightly tipsy paragraph that more or less amounted to 'if I don't see you tomorrow morning, take care of yourself', and the painfully brief phone call he shared with Paddy (currently in London at some veterinary event, the details of which hadn't really been made clear to him), then he wasn't lying. There was little else that needed to be said, little else he could say. He hardly knew what was going on himself. 

Cain watched him over the rim of his mug, pausing to speak before taking a sip, "to who, Robert?"  

In all honesty, Aaron knew it was only going to be a matter of time before someone he didn't want to find out about his _elopement_ did just that. Keeping the rest of his family in the dark had been much to do with preserving his dignity and avoiding embarrassing questions, but his uncle was an entirely different story. Whatever dark past weighed Robert down and poisoned the village's opinion of him was almost certainly no secret to someone like Cain - someone who knew all the worst things about everyone and exactly how to use it to his advantage - and considering his previous offences, Aaron wouldn't have put it past him to use physical force if it meant protecting his nephew from bad influences. 

He set his fork down, the same mild panic rising in his stomach at the mention of that name as when Adam had brought it up in the pub, "what about Robert?"

"You weren't very subtle about it last night," Cain shook his head, something resembling mock disappointment, "first thing I see of the kid since he was in high school, and he's eating your face off." 

"So I can't deny it."  

"Afraid not," he finished his tea in one final swig, setting the mug down on top of the newspaper. He shook his head, "Robert Sugden. Didn't even know he was gay." 

Aaron didn't bother correcting him, digging himself into a hole of yet more familiarities with the man wasn't going to do him any favours. The silence pressed. He prodded a rasher of bacon with his fork, his appetite diminishing the longer he stared at it. Cain continued, "our Debbie had a thing with him back in the day. Ended up being a right dickhead. Same as his brother."  

"Sugdens, innit," he heard himself say it before it properly registered in his brain, and somewhere deep down he probably believed it. Since he was a child, he'd been made fully aware of a Dingle's opinion on the various families in Emmerdale (as Dingles were quite the opinionated crowd), and one in particular always cropped up more than the rest. It wasn't exactly a question of _two households both alike in dignity_ \- they got on perfectly well most of the time. In such a small village, however, it was too easy to step on people's toes, and even easier to hold silent grudges. He wondered if that was why he'd grown up surrounded by the odd remark or suggestion of the Sugden siblings (never Jack. Jack was a respectable, good man, more so than any other man, perhaps why his children - the exception arguably made for Victoria - were held to such high standards they always managed to fall short of) being the " _kind of people you're just meant to avoid, kidda_ ". 

Much to his annoyance, Cain ignored Aaron's attempt at appeasement, "you'll stay away from him if you know what's good for ya."

He saw it then. His way in, "why, what's he done?"

Before Cain could put him out of his misery, however, a cheery but slightly exasperated voice filled the room, "morning, love," Chas squeezed her son's shoulder as she passed him, turning to face him once she was in the kitchen. She seemed unfazed by the chill of the unheated house despite only wearing a short-sleeved olive blouse, "I hope it's alright for you, we didn't have any proper sausages so I had to use some of those vegetarian ones, hope they're alright."

 Aaron shrugged with a smile, "prefer them anyway."

 Cain went to stand, his chair scraping harshly against the tiled floor, "right. Well," he looked at Aaron, "the car's outside. Don't smash it up too much, please."

 "I won't."

 "And don't crash into the wall when you're reversing out like you did last time. I've just rebuilt it."

 He hadn't crashed into the wall. He'd tapped it at worst, and Cain had even admitted to him the day before that it was crumbling and was in need of urgent repair. Aaron's interference was the snowflake that caused the avalanche, from where he was standing, "I'll try not to. Won't matter when the yanks bomb the place, though, will it?"

 Chas glared at him, "Aaron."

 "What?"

 "Don't make jokes like that."

 Aaron found himself taken aback by his mother's serious tone. It felt alien coming from her mouth, like it was some sort of act she would, at any moment, snap out of. Not that she was incapable of being serious, not that at all, but her bouts of seriousness were either presented with an affectionate undertone or sandwiched between humour. This, for all its subtlety, was jarring enough for Aaron to accompany his response with a nervous laugh, "why not?"

 She swallowed, the act taking a lot of effort to uphold, "it's not something to joke about."

 "No, cause shovelling me off to fucking Scotland where I never know if I'll see any of you again does sound quite funny, doesn't it?" He was surprised at himself once the words were out in the open, a sudden burst of rage that had been lying dormant since the night before taking hold of him. Still, he managed to keep from raising his voice, letting it become woven with bitter aggression instead. He rode on the wake of it, rightly or wrongly letting all his unanswered questions pour into his mind at once, each with its own relentless urgency.

 "Oi. Language," Cain shot him a stern look, his final ally crossing enemy lines. Aaron couldn't help but suddenly feel he was fifteen again.

 Chas' voice softened, as did her expression, but any attempt at sympathy could only come across as patronising at this moment in time, "it's for your own safety, you know that. You can't be here-"

 Aaron didn't waver, "why not?" He stared accusingly from Chas to Cain, opening the question too to his uncle. When neither responded with any more than an uncomfortable aversion of their gaze, he continued to press, "why not? Why can't I be here but everyone else can?"

 The clock on the wall became incessant. The ticking of the gears and they forced the second hand further and further to the hour was the only sound to fill the room for a good few moments, and it swelled like a gas to occupy it. His mother spoke regretfully, "because they'll come here and they'll…" she trailed off, acutely aware of how much she sounded like she was explaining a complex concept to a child in the most simplified way possible, "they'll seed you out, cause-"

 It clicked, finally.

 Before Dublin was plastered on the front pages, there had been a different cause for international concern that invited late-night debates on panel shows. It had first come to light earlier that month - exactly a week before his first night out in what felt like forever in which he'd made his fatal encounter with Robert. Seven thousand. That's what they relayed back to the studio in the morning. Seven thousand, and that was only the ones that were recorded, and only the ones that had taken place in the first three days of what was still and ongoing invasion. Seven thousand innocent souls ripped from their bodies, seven thousand slaughtered by those who paraded in the streets of Mexico City as heroes, as _patriots_. 7000. Typed out by a BBC intern and displayed behind a stony-faced newsreader against the backdrop of a deserted city. No names, no faces, just the number that hung over him all day. " _It gives us some sort of idea of the atrocities they commit against their own people, behind their own borders_ ," one journalist had said, as if uncovering it had been some sort of insightful discovery. They stopped reporting on it after a few days, not because they didn't care about the massacre of gay people, obviously not. They only feared the word would start poisoning their vocal chords if they had to say it any longer.

 He made no effort to hide his expression. Somewhere between frustration and utter betrayal. Chas caught it, but remained defiant, "you saw what happened over there, love. I can't take that risk, I can't. I won't."

 Aaron didn't look at her, "it won't be like Mexico."

 "How do you know that?"

 "It just won't," his argument failing him only pushed his anger further, his voice now simmering just below a shout, "how would they know?"

 He wasn't the only one struggling, though. Chas made less of an effort now to restrain herself. She exploded, "they just know, Aaron! I can't take the risk. This is happening. It might not look like it now, it might not feel like it, but it is."

 Silence fell like rubble in the aftermath of a car bomb. Chas inhaled a shaky breath, closing her eyes, while Cain sat motionless. Aaron stood abruptly, not looking either of them in the eye, "trust me, it feels like it."

 Fury lifted the weight of those words from his shoulders, at least in that moment. Later on, of course, this scene would play out over and over again, the director in his head calling 'cut' and going for another thousand takes until the actors became worn out. He heard Chas call after him as he stormed out of the room and upstairs, tears pricking his eyes that he could convince himself were a product of anger, not fear.

 

***

 

The car was an old, barely-roadworthy Volvo from where Aaron didn't want to even imagine Cain had acquired. He'd found it waiting for him on the drive, stood in stark and uncomfortable contrast with its peaceful, muted surroundings. Its once blush red paint had worn and faded in places, as had (as Aaron discovered upon opening the driver door - the manual lock reminding him he had to go back inside and get the keys) much of the dated fake-leather interior. The back seats were sunken and torn around the seams, their brown plastic skin picked at and ripped off by the past decade's restless children forced to endure a weekend in Whitby. If ever there was some time in the future where Aaron would drag his own kids on a day trip, he was sure it wouldn't be in a car in a state like this.

Despite its rather desolate appearance, everything seemed to be in working order. The mileage was surprisingly low for a car that looked older than Aaron himself, and he found he didn't have to rev the engine as much to pull away without stalling (a grievance he had with his own, less highland-worthy car). It would last the seven-hour journey, at least, though he was still concerned it wouldn't fare as well if he had to do any off-roading. Most of the route up to Aviemore was motorway once he was out of the Dales, so if it did pack in when faced with a steep incline at least he didn't have far to walk back. As he reached to change gears, he realised his hands were shaking. He put it down to the cold.

 As his foot went to press down on the accelerator, propelling him out of the village and onto the main road, something stopped him. The sun hung low, almost in his eyes, scattering light across the frosty walls and pavements and the tarmac in front of him that hadn't thawed since the early morning. They lay silent, not a single pair of feet gracing the concrete nor hands skimming across the damp moss that grew in the cracks of the limestone, no one to witness the last peaceful winter's morning to visit the village but himself. A pair of house martins (of the few that hadn't migrated) shuffled along the telephone wire that stretched out from one of the cottages, chattering to one another unfazed as the car rolled past. Only when it began to judder in protest of travelling so slowly in third did Aaron snap out of his trance, or whatever it had been, catching the engine with the clutch and spying a familiar figure at the side of the road ahead.

 Robert was waiting at the bus stop, uncharacteristically dishevelled with a silver suitcase leaning against his leg. It would have been so easy for Aaron to drive past him without a second glance had he been going faster, and even as he got closer he was sure the man would look up from his phone and reveal a stranger's face. It was the denim jacket that camouflaged him, made him look like some sort of middle-aged man clinging onto his student days. Despite his better judgement, Aaron pulled in to the bus stop, catching the attention of the man who was definitely Robert (now he'd looked up and not made any considerable effort to hide the smile on his face) and rolled down the left-hand window as he walked over, suitcase in tow, "can't get away quick enough, ey?"

 Robert lay his free hand on the roof above the window, peering inside, "could say the same about you. This your car?"

 His inspection of the inside of the vehicle gave no indication of the verdict, though Aaron didn't know why his opinion of it particularly mattered to him. He could say it was only good for scrap and he'd probably just nod and agree, "is now."

 Robert continued to scan the interior, looking everywhere but Aaron, "which way are you going?"

 "Up, hopefully. It's in the sat nav," he tapped the top of the device crudely stuck to the dashboard beside him as if to emphasise his statement.

 Robert looked out onto the road ahead, considering it for a moment before saying, "I think through Carlisle is the quickest, up the M6. I used to drive to Glasgow all the time, fucking nightmare-"

 "Are you coming with me or not?"

 He blinked, dumbfounded. "What?"

 "Cause I'm parked on a bus stop and I don't know how legal that is, so…"

 Robert huffed, looking almost embarrassed, "quite a change of tone from last night. Am I not a serial killer anymore?"

Aaron shrugged, successfully playing off the mild panic he'd thrown himself into after blurting out that question from nowhere, again, "I've thought about it since last night."

 "And you realised how much you couldn't bear never seeing me again."

 He grinned, "something like that, yeah."

 The wind picked up, blowing Robert's hair the wrong way over his face. Every second longer he dragged out his decision was a second further pushing Aaron to slam down on the accelerator and speed away from him, forever. Robert's face dropped suddenly, looking down disappointedly at his suitcase, "I've only packed three pairs of socks."

 "I've got loads."

 "Aaron-"

 "You'd rather be moping round Leeds when this all kicks off, would you?" Aaron refused to let Robert avert his eyes from his. It was an accusation, more than a threat, like fleeing was the brave thing to do.

 Robert shook his head, somewhat in admiration. "You're serious, aren't you?"

 The feeling was mutual, Aaron didn't know how many times he had to reiterate his commitment. The fact he'd taken it this far without backtracking was somewhat a miracle, "yes I'm bloody serious, I'm saving you from mass destruction here."

 His disbelief was wavering, but still meant he had to consider Aaron's expression for confirmation he wasn't being led on (or going mad, or both). He looked to again to his suitcase, the road, and back to Aaron with a defeated sigh, and in place of a formal agreement trailed round to the back of the vehicle and threw the case in the boot, the thud of its impact rocking the suspension. The next thing Aaron knew, he was sitting face-to-face with the man who had just pulled himself into the passenger seat with a feeling of slight wariness washing over him. That had been far too easy.

 

***  
 

They were somewhere near Reeth when Robert said out of nowhere, "I feel like I don't know anything about you."

The road wound through heather moorland, thick waves of brown and purple frozen in their movements as if they were still trapped beneath the glacier that formed them, lapping the horizon that itself was hazed by low cloud. In the distance, the road made blind descent into the town Aaron had accompanied Zak to (before he moved) for agricultural shows. The event itself was often the highlight of his summer, but the journey over the valley was hair-raising to say the least in a car with bad brakes and an area prone to bad weather. One year in particular, when he was about seven or eight, he'd watched from the passenger seat as his uncle failed to stop in time for a grouse and her two chicks that had wandered from their moorland nest and onto the semi-flooded tarmac. He'd cried about it for hours afterwards, "it's mutual."

"Come on then, ask me."

The question caught Aaron off guard, even stealing a glance at the man for as long as he dared, "ask you what?"  

"Anything. I'll do the same."

Aaron hesitated. He changed down the gears for the downward slope, and even on almost-full brake the car rolled at a concerning speed. His mind immediately presented him with the pressing issue of _what horrific act have you committed to make everyone in your home village despise even saying your name?_ He wondered if his reluctance to say it was more a case of not wanting to ask, or not wanting to know, "who do you support?"  

Robert turned his eyes from the view on his left to Aaron, "what, politically or football?"

Aaron shrugged, "both."  

The pause that followed was not one of thought, but of hesitance. Somewhere in one of his mother's glossy magazines he'd read that politics was the top of a list of the three things you should never discuss on a first date, so it was good that wasn't what this was. Robert spoke carefully, "Labour and Liverpool."

In hindsight, it was probably the team he was more concerned about, "snap."  

"Cat or dog?" 

Aaron's response was almost instantaneous, "dog. These are a bit superficial, aren't they?"

"Then ask something deeper," there was a hint of something in Robert's voice. Frustration, flirtation, a weirdly attractive mix of the two.

It didn't take Aaron long to devise his deep question, "Blur or Oasis?"

Robert shook his head, but Aaron could tell from his voice that he was smiling, "that's not deep." 

"It's important."  

"It's not 1996."  

Aaron persisted, "Blur or Oasis?"  

"Blur."  

"You're wrong."  

"Well," Robert turned back the view out of his window. Rows of limestone cottages, not dissimilar from those that lined the streets of the village they'd left in the dust, were interspersed with hedges and shops that were inconspicuous against the residential buildings if not for the hand-painted signs meant to give them an air of authenticity, "that's only if I had to choose. I like them both. It's a trick question anyway, everyone knows the real answer is Pulp." 

"No," Aaron shook his head. A pheasant flapped from its perch on the drystone wall of the churchyard as they drove past, vocalising its alarm before disappearing in a flutter of feathers, "only cause my mum fancies Jarvis Cocker and after twenty years it kind of ruins them for you."  

Robert leant back into his seat, stretching his arms out in his lap, "I used to fancy Jarvis Cocker." 

"Why?"  

"God knows," he laughed, like he was revisiting a fond memory, "obviously I didn't know I fancied him then, but I did. Common People was the first cassette I bought."  

Aaron gave an incredulous look, what would be directed towards his passenger if he wasn't driving, "cassettes, you're so old."  

The offence plastered over Robert's face at those words was almost comical, "I'm not _old_ ," he said defensively, though it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than Aaron.  

"Wait," he suddenly realised he'd never asked Robert what was probably quite an important question, "how old are you?"  

"I'm thirty," Robert tried his best not to sound ashamed of the fact.  

"Thirty?"  

"Thirty."  

It hadn't even occurred to Aaron that Robert might be older than he was. By a year or two, maybe, but even when he mentioned being at university this time ten years ago he failed to put two and two together. With that revelation in mind, he decided to continue in his antagonising, "common people. 'S a bit ironic."  

Robert thought for a while, failing to understand, "how's it ironic?"  

"I've seen your flat, it's not very common," he thought back to the cold oak floors of Robert's bedroom, the remote-control blinds, the black sofa he'd perched awkwardly on, picking apart a cheese omelette waiting for Robert to return from his 'shit we're out of milk' run to the Co-op down the road. He'd managed to finish it before the click of the front door rang through the flat, before the occupant came to sit beside him and made the world feel present and uncomfortably close. The empty plate was discarded on the glass coffee table, the one Aaron had rested his feet on before coming to feel guilty for doing so, Robert absorbing him into meaningless conversation that somehow descended into him kissing Aaron's neck and latching his fingers around the waistband of his jeans. Now that he came to think of it, they got quite far still just about fully-clothed, but Robert had stopped seemingly unprompted. He had stared searchingly at the man lying beneath him with his back against the leather upholstery, kissing him chastely one final time before claiming he had to make a phone call and clambered off him into the kitchen.

Looking to that same man, it was difficult to believe he was just that. That confidence in spontaneity, the one that gave him his aura of mystery (although he wasn't necessarily mysterious, it just amplified all the things Aaron didn't know about him), had disappeared almost in its entirety. Now every word he uttered was said in a way that made him appear desperate to prove himself, or defend himself against false accusations. Where along the way the switch had been made Aaron couldn't quite pinpoint.

 Robert continued to try and somehow denounce his status, "my dad was a farmer."

"You're not."

"I was going to be."

Aaron squeezed the gas as they left the village, the engine groaning with the strain, "But you're not, and now you live in a million-pound flat."

Robert laughed, "in Leeds."

"Doesn't make it common."

"No, but my heart's in the right place." He paused, for effect, for time, whichever gave him more control, "as you'd expect, if you knew my family."

"I do know your family. And it's not like you don't get Tory farmers."

"He wasn't though."

"I thought you just said he was."

Robert was either utterly oblivious to Aaron's winding-up or was, at this point, seeking confrontation, "he was a farmer. He wasn't a Tory. He loved Neil Kinnock. Met him. He had a photo of them both in the living room. You know, the leader of-"

"I know who Neil Kinnock is, I do have GCSEs, you know."

Robert was struck silent, and remained that way for an unbearably long while. His tone when he spoke was low, cautious, "I didn't mean it like that."

He had been half joking in his outburst, but that said, Robert was becoming undeniably annoying in his relentlessness, so it was a blessing in disguise it had shut him up. The price of the peace was, unfortunately, a thick tension that began to build between them. Aaron sighed, "I know you didn't, I'm just..." he shrugged, "...I dunno. I don't want to do this."

It was a good enough excuse, and, the more he thought about it, maybe an honest one. After all, the past twenty-four hours had left him feel agitated and evidently confrontational. He just didn't want or need any sympathy from a man he didn't know.

Robert spoke gently again, untinged with the bitterness Aaron had expected, "I can get out if you want."

The thought did cross his mind, but only briefly. As much as time alone would probably do Aaron some good, he couldn't just abandon Robert on the side of a country road in the middle of nowhere, and he was thus far mostly enjoying his company, "no, no, not you. The whole thing. Leaving. You're the only good bit about it."

He seemed to take it as quite a hefty compliment, "cheers," his tone picked up again, "it's nice, Aviemore. Used to go there on holiday."

"Never been," Aaron replied bluntly.

"When did Zak move there?"

"Two thousand and…" he had to pause to think, "seven years ago. 2010."

"And he lives there permanently?"

"Belle comes back every so often, but still. Haven't even seen her in at least two years."

Robert sounded genuinely surprised, "bit of a way. What took him all the way up there?"

"Lisa inherited it. I've only seen photos, it looks alright."

"Why didn't they just sell it?"

"I don't know, Robert, you can ask them when we get there."

 

***

 

Aaron had learned more about Robert in the following few hours than he had with any other person in two years. Trivial points, mainly: he did Maths at Sheffield University despite having hated the subject since he was in primary school, didn't actually care for Britpop as much as he'd let on (preferred sixties stuff, apparently, "but not The Beatles"), didn't really like Worcester sauce, had an odd, condescending sort of tone to his voice when he spoke seriously that he was completely oblivious to, failed his driving test five times, and won a quiz round once for his extensive knowledge of different kinds of cloud. Oh, and it was Vic's jacket, but in the spirit of giving she'd donated it to Robert because it was at least five sizes too big for her.

He'd been putting off taking a break since Robert proposed the idea as they passed Carlisle, claiming it wasn't fair for them to swap over until at least halfway into the journey. It had been put off from the border, to Lockerbie, to Glasgow ("but Glasgow's fucking miles away Aaron, we'll be more or less there by then"), back to Lockerbie. Just beyond, to be precise, when Aaron nearly swerved out of their lane and into the side of a lorry overtaking them, and Robert said if they didn't swap at the next service station they probably wouldn't make it much further anyway.

So at ten past two he found himself slumped in the passenger seat of a Volvo god-knows-what overlooking a particularly interesting section of motorway outside Annandale Water services, tapping improvised rhythms against the dashboard as he watched the endless stream of traffic speed past. Robert had ventured inside in search of food, and despite Aaron insisting he wasn't hungry, the look of doubt Robert had given him suggested he would be offered some token Greggs pasty on his return. Theirs was the only sign of life in the entire car park, them and a small silver Fiat further towards the row of trees that marked the threshold where the tarmac became field and wilderness. Somewhere between leaving Emmerdale and now, he had let himself ponder the outright absurdity of dragging Robert, a stranger for all intents and purposes, on a three-hundred-mile journey, at the end of it to live for an indefinite amount of time with members of Aaron's family he only knew by name (at least for the last ten years, they had been close once upon a time). Three hundred miles from his family, his friends, his job, his house…Aaron would have become overwhelmed with guilt had he not reminded himself a thousand times previously that Robert was with him entirely of his own choosing, and fully aware of what was in store at the end of it. Perhaps he wasn't the only one eager to get away, after all.

Whatever Robert's motivation for agreeing to this, whatever _this_ was, Aaron wasn't in any position to complain. A one-night-stand-turned-something-else-that-could-just-be-friends was still better company that his own thoughts - especially for the second leg of the journey. Aaron would be lying if he said he wasn't looking forward to being able to admire Robert's gorgeous face (and even he could admit it was gorgeous) for a couple of hours without any searching glances looking back at him.

He was snapped from his thoughts by the sight of Robert returning, the golden reflection of the setting sun on the side of the complex behind rendering him a silhouette. Aaron had to look away to avoid blinding himself, and the next time he looked up he was met with the sight of Robert's profile, drained of colour with the exception of the red tips of his cold ears, staring distantly at over the steering wheel. His brow was furrowed in confusion, or disbelief, lips parted slightly as if his mind was whirring to figure something out. Even as the silence pressed, Aaron said nothing, just continued to watch as if he could decipher the answer he wanted without asking.

After what felt like hours, something unspecified snapped Robert from his trance, and in the same instant he seemed to become suddenly aware of his surroundings and with them, Aaron's presence. He hastily passed the offerings of the service station - a pair of croissants encased in plastic wrappers and a BLT - over to Aaron, eager to rid himself of them as if they were diseased. "They didn't have much," he said, expressionless, "sorry."

"S'alright," Aaron turned the sandwich over in his hand. The cardboard packaging had been crumpled at the edges as a result of being gripped too tightly, "you okay? You look a bit..."

Robert turned to him when he trailed off, "a bit what?"

"Shaken."

 That sent him off into another bout of self-reflection. It took him a short while longer to conclude, "I'm fine." The colour was finally returning to his face as he shot Aaron a final reassuring smile, imitating his gesture of tapping the top of the sat nav, "only another three and a bit hours to go."

Aaron didn't respond, only continued to watch Robert with an unseen look of concern as he stalled on his attempt to reverse out of the car park. He released some of the pressure of his agitation by cursing at the car and vastly overcompensating on the rev in the second, successful attempt, white knuckles flexing around the steering wheel.

"Sorry," he said quietly, once they had re-joined the motorway, grey road and sky alike in their unchanging state as far as the eye could see. When Aaron was momentarily silent, he stole a glance in his direction, searching for forgiveness.

Aaron smiled sympathetically, though wondered why he was the one considered in an unfit state to drive, "are you sure you're alright?"

For a moment, it looked as if Robert was considering his answer, considering telling the truth. Instead, he nodded, this time not taking his eyes off the road, "yeah."

 

***

 

An hour later, they were beginning to pass signs for Glasgow. Despite dusk settling in early for a while now, the navy sky and the first stars glowing beneath a thin cover of clearing cloud did not match in Aaron's mind with the clock on the sat nav that claimed it to be approaching 4 o'clock. The long nights resulted in him feeling tired halfway through the afternoon, living out the rest of the 'day' in anticipation of going to bed and messing up his sleeping pattern. As a child, he'd been good at adjusting - especially after the clocks went back, but as he got older (and maybe an element of it was his strive for consistency increasing with age) it had an increasing effect on him with each passing winter. Today seemed no exception, the combination of the gentle droning of the engine, the warm air conditioning, and whatever Robert was playing from his phone via an aux cord Aaron had pulled out from the glove compartment was creating an atmosphere wherein he had to fight to keep his eyes open.

He asked Robert what was playing from his phone. Frankie Valli, apparently.

They had been tailing a transit van with the words _Terry's Kitchen & Bathroom Fittings_ in arched yellow font fading over the rear doors for a while now, and up until then he hadn't noticed that the two 'r's in 'Terry' were stylised as a pair of taps. When Robert overtook them, Aaron glanced over to it, catching a glimpse of a red-haired woman behind the wheel and a content German shepherd in the passenger seat. He'd had a German shepherd once, now unfortunately only a distant memory, and never another since. One day, he always told himself, when he had a place of his own and more time, he would think about getting another dog. For now, however, and for the foreseeable future, he'd have to settle for Alfie - which wasn't a bad thing at all, but someone else's dog was never quite the same as your own.

Robert hadn't asked why he hadn't phoned his mother as he'd said he would at the service station. He felt awful for it, no matter how bad the terms they'd parted on were (if anything that only made it worse), but couldn't bring himself to hear her voice. It brought him back to the reality of his situation, why he was driving up the M74 with nothing but a suitcase full of last-minute necessities and a stranger's company in the first place, and it evoked a feeling of anger and betrayal he would prefer not to unearth for the time being. He'd sent her a single text while he was waiting for Robert to return from his quest to find food at Annandale Water to let her know he was alive.

_Stopped off at Lockerbie for something to eat, should be at Zak's by evening. See you soon x_

He didn't expect her to reply, not necessarily because of what had happened, just because she never usually did unless she had something to say. In all fairness, he lost signal a few miles after sending that text so he wouldn't have known either way, but not before a notification flashed up from his news app - stressing its urgency.

"Fuck."

Aaron hadn't even realised he'd expressed his dismay aloud until Robert retaliated with a concerned "what?". They were both wide awake now.

 He didn't look up from his phone when he answered, scrolling and skim-reading frantically, "turn on the radio."

Robert complied, hand moving from the wheel to turn the dial just above the CD player. A voice they recognised as the Prime Minister's rang loud and clear through the car.

 " _-a final demand to halt their progression to the Port of Liverpool and withdraw their ships from the Irish Sea. At 14:36 this afternoon, two US Navy ships entered the estuary of the river Mersey, open firing upon the shores of Bootle and Wallasey. This act of unprovoked aggression is one that leaves us with very little choice, and I can therefore inform you now that the United Kingdom is at war with the United States of America."_

Robert reached for the dial to shut them off. Aaron swatted his hand away, "no, leave it on."

The announcement continued, _"this is by no means the outcome we hoped for, but our nation and its people are strong and resilient, and resisting those who threaten our freedom should be every citizen's duty. We request you keep mobile phones, radios, or televisions switched on should any further addresses be broadcast that contain information necessary for your safety and your country's victory. We shall not be defeated. God save the Queen."_

Static consumed the signal. Robert switched it off, without objection this time.

Aaron rubbed his hand over his face, "God save the fucking Queen," he muttered, the malice of the words releasing enough emotion for both of them. What emotion, he couldn't quite say. Some monstrous cocktail of rage, resentment, and shock. Robert said nothing, just gripped the steering wheel tighter and accelerated into the empty space of the motorway ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never seen nor driven a volvo 4x4 in my life I don’t even know if volvo do 4x4s so any volvo fans that want to point out any technical inaccuracies my dms r open xoxoxo


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw. fairly graphic violence

The day after his seventeenth birthday, Aaron had awoken late in the morning and decided to go for a walk. He had no particular destination in mind, but the urge to be outside and _elsewhere_ was persistent, and after a week of being cooped up indoors with little to do but muse the aftermath of Christmas and New Year and everything else worth looking forward to, he felt as if he was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms for fresh air. Midwinter's bite didn't affect him as much as it had in late October, back when his skin hadn't yet gotten used to the absence of the summer sun's assistance in keeping a steady temperature, and the sensation of the crisp, clean air against the back of his throat felt harsh and burning rather than refreshing as it did now.

As the first to walk the road that passed Butler's Farm since the previous night's snowfall, he revelled in the small delight of leaving a lone track of footprints in the pristine white cloak that covered the footpath. The storm hadn't been forecast, so the road hadn't been cleared and overnight became the perfect setup for a death trap. As he turned the corner, the one marked by an old stone barn with a crumbling roof that sheltered clusters of weeds and rabbits alike, a tractor hurtled past and skidded alarmingly with the momentum of the turn, tyres throwing slush into the air that dappled the edge of the untainted snow by the roadside.

Everything around him felt timeless, surreal, as if he was walking the circumference of the universe that just so happened to manifest itself as his snow-drowned back lane. The sky appeared the same colour as the ground - white, featureless, endless - as if, had the horizon shown itself to him, there would be no differentiating between earth and heaven. For a long while afterwards, he would second-guess his own memories of this journey, wondering if he had ever set foot outside of the house that day in January or if it was all a fabrication of his mind. It was simultaneously lit with the brightness of midday and the half-light of dawn, the sun barely holding the strength to permeate the cloud - like a bulb seen through a dark lampshade - yet illuminating every white-blanketed surface of the valley below. An optical illusion, surely, but the light of the late morning seemed to source itself from the ground and reflect on the overcast sky. Reversed.

Aaron continued down the road where it retreated into the cover of the oaks' skeletal branches. One limb in particular, belonging to one of the largest trees by the road that had felled a drystone wall to grow at its desired angle, hung concerningly low. A gust or storm one day would break it free and block the road for however long it took someone to notice, but for now it remained suspended and motionless. He remembered thinking to himself that just beyond the final tree, the one with the split trunk that was particularly inviting for children to climb, he would turn on his heel and head back, having come far enough for one day.

Further on from this chosen point, the road ascended into a blind hill, one that you had to navigate by hearing alone should you want to avoid being hit by a speeding car (and they did speed. Too often they came so fast over the hill that all four wheels left the ground, a fair number of them probably ending up smashed into the side of one of the oaks). On this crisp, still morning, however, there was no whirring engines to listen out for. The hill stood silently observing, dwarfed by the peaks that bordered the valley but commanding of its own space nonetheless. Just as he turned to make his way home, something at the brow caught Aaron's eye.

Two startled eyes watched him, frozen in their tracks. He too was still, surprised by the hare's presence on his otherwise lonesome walk. It was motionless for a while, watching him with wary but inquisitive yellow eyes, and Aaron founded himself mirroring it. Gingerly, it descended the hill, leaving tracks in the thin layer of slush on the road as it went. It stopped every few paces, observing him again with wary glances and quick breath, until it stood practically at his feet - close enough for him to make out individual strands of tawny fur and the patches of white around its nose and eyes.

The pair of them remained in the stand-off for quite some time. At first, Aaron didn't dare move so much as an inch for fear it would scare the creature off. He didn't even look away from it - as if doing so would cause it to vanish when he looked back. As if, for all the hare's harmlessness, he was warier of it than it was of him.

Confidence and curiosity got the better of him. He tested the water by stretching out his fingers, slowly, gently, until his outstretched palm was facing the ground. The gesture caught the hare's attention, but it stood its ground. As he brought his hand down, moving it by the millimetre, the hare's eyes were locked on it, following every miniscule motion, but its body was entirely still.

Barely a hair's breadth from the animal's head, close enough so that he could feel the heat radiating from its body, it took off with such speed Aaron's reflexes jolted his hand back as if he had been burned. The rustling of undergrowth that echoed in his mind was all that remained of the hare, that and the tracks it left in the snow. Tracks that lead towards Aaron, and then away from him.

 

***

 

The motorway had long since given way to winding country roads, though still not ones as narrow and lethal as the ones back home (and the ones they would inevitably have to face).  The roll of endless fields was just visible in the dark, punctuated occasionally by the light of a barn or farmhouse somewhere in the distance. Aaron made the most of their altitude for a brief window of reception, repeatedly refreshing his news app as if the reel would change in those second-long intervals. "They've made it to Manchester already. '214 people dead and over 600 injured following a failed resistance to US military invasion in central Manchester’."

"Jesus."

"They're hanging flags...look," he showed the phone to Robert, who hesitated before turning his eyes briefly from the road to see the picture of American flags hanging from windows and streetlights, but didn't have a chance to respond before Aaron continued, "the fucking government...they're not doing anything about it! Like have you seen this-" he read one of the headlines, "'PM condemns 'violence on both sides' as Americans land in Manchester, makes no indication of when British military will be deployed in city'. On both fucking sides!"

Robert initially said nothing. Then, "you put too much faith in them."

Aaron looked at him, confused, "in who?"

"The government," he said the words with such diction it felt patronising. Aaron didn't suppose he'd meant it, he was just as angry as he was, after all. "They're in on it."

Just exactly what Robert was getting at took a while for Aaron to piece together. He wanted to protest, call him crazy, but it all made sense. The broadcast had been a futile attempt at a cover-up, but now, with the invasion underway, the mask was rapidly falling.

This wasn't a war. It was a repossession. 

 

***

Seven and a half miles outside of Aviemore (according to the sat nav) the sight to behold on the road ahead prompted Robert to slam the brakes on, swearing under his breath. Aaron had presumed it was a crash, as the headlights of the obstructing vehicle were shining perpendicular to the road. It was only when his eyes adjusted properly to the dark that he made out the figures of two armed individuals silhouetted by the glare of their truck's fog lights.

Hail was beginning to patter lightly on the windscreen. The soldier furthest from the truck beckoned for them to get out of the car, his arm flickering in and out of the light like the flame of a candle. Robert didn't say anything, didn't so much as look in Aaron's direction as he complied, pulling the keys from the ignition and opening the door. A blast of cold air flooded the car as he did so, sending a shiver through Aaron's body before he followed, pulling the hood of his coat over his head.

Winter in the Highlands was by far more brutal than anywhere else in the country. It was more or less common knowledge, at least from all the reports of record snowfall and temperatures in the minus-twenties that sourced from there. One thing was to see it written in a news report, another thing entirely was to experience it first-hand. It took all of the few paces to catch up with Robert on the road ahead for his hands to become numb beyond any sensation at all, and he didn't dare warm them in the pockets of his coat for fear of what the trigger-happy Americans would presume of their concealment.

The pair stood motionless a few yards from the front of the car, neither of them daring to get closer to the carbine resting in the beckoning soldier's gloved hands. He sauntered up to them, leaving enough space so that he had to raise his voice to be heard over the hailstorm that had developed from a trickle to a roar, but close enough for Aaron to see the beads of sweat under the brow of his beret despite the cold.

The soldier spoke in a jovial, southern Tennessee accent, "evening, gentlemen," he looked up, squinting against the pellets of ice that fell onto his face but seeming otherwise unaffected by them, "not really the weather for a road trip, is it?"

Neither man said anything. Aaron averted his gaze town to the black tarmac, concentrating on stilling the shiver that grew more violent with every passing moment. The soldier spoke again, sharp and threatening, "is it?"

Their unified reply was instant, "no."

"No. Where are you headed?"

Robert responded promptly, acutely aware now of the suspicion silence held, "Inverness."

It was only a white lie. The road they travelled would eventually take them to the city, but visions of the soldiers searching the Volvo and finding the sat nav with _Braeriach Farm, Aviemore_ programmed into it refused to leave his mind. He supressed the urge to steal a glance at Robert, but built from his single word an image of his reassuringly confident stance, his unrevealing eyes refusing to show fear. _Wasps can smell fear_ , his mother had told him the first or second time he encountered one, _if you don't show fear, they won't sting you_. He didn't know how true that was. He was petrified of them and yet had never been stung once.

The second soldier - a smaller, younger looking man who periodically wiped his face of melted ice - watched him with dark, sunken eyes. Owl-like. Aaron had played the field mouse in Year One Nativity, when they ran out of obscure roles to designate sixty-odd kids, but didn't much like the idea of channelling that character now. A hailstone collided with his left hand, and he felt the trail of water descend as far as the knuckle of his forefinger before it reached numb, insensate skin.

The Tennessean soldier tilted his head, considered them both for a second, before shaking his head and shifting the weight of his combat boots against the ground. "I'm afraid this road has a toll charge," he said, "you pay the toll, and you can be on your way."

Aaron could only bring himself to take short shallow breaths, for fear anything greater would solidify his existence in the moment, or otherwise draw unwanted attention. Both and he and Robert stood in stunned silence, before the latter man, once again, took the bait, "how much?"

Tennessee grinned, dragging out the moment for as long as was painfully possible. Eventually he turned to his comrade, but his address was not just to him, "how much are we saying, Taylor?"

The owl soldier didn't so much as flicker his gaze from Aaron, "two hundred."

"Two hundred," Tennessee relayed back to them, perfectly aware they had heard the first time. His face was uncannily smooth, like a computer simulation, but something about his wide jaw and stern eyes gave the impression of old age. He looked pointedly at Robert and then to Aaron before shaking and bowing his head, huffing out a laugh. "No. No, no, I don’t want your money. We're not in this for the money, you see. We're here to protect this road, make sure only the folk who really want to cross it, cross it," he began pacing along the threshold of the beam pouring from the truck's lights, shadowed like the hailstones that fell through its glare, "any folk can pay with money, you see. Any folk who can afford it. Can you afford it?"

Robert's gave a fittingly curt response. "Yes."

He wagged his finger at Robert, still pacing and with his other hand behind his back, "see, what if you couldn't? So what if you didn’t have two hundred pounds, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't let you cross just 'cause you didn't have the money, right?"

"No."

"No," the soldier echoed, "it wouldn't at all. So I'm fair. I'm very fair - aren't I fair, Taylor?"

The Owl nodded once, "very fair."

"I'm fair. I make the toll of this road something everyone can afford," he halted, squaring his feet as he had been taught to do many years ago. This time, his topic shift wasn't punctuated with a piercing stare at either of them. Instead, he turned his face back up to the sky, a comically disgruntled look on his face, and removed his beret to brush off the hailstones that had stuck to the felt. As he readjusted it, he spoke again. "Have you ever experienced guilt, gentlemen?"

Aaron swallowed. The hail was colliding with the road at his feet, much of it with such force that it rebounded, sending a spray of ice over the toes of his shoes that he could feel beginning to soak. Relieved as he was to have remembered his coat, it was now he learned it wasn't much in the way of waterproof or insulating. The muffled sound of hailstones battering his hood around his ears made it hard to hear much else, which was all the more an issue when a heavily armed American was about to give him a philosophical lecture.

This time, half to his relief, the soldier didn't press for an answer, "of course you have, everyone has. And guilt has a price, does it not?" He began pacing again, this time considerably slower, "depending on the kind of the guilt, I suppose. Some say guilt for betrayal, for deception, for _murder_ ," with that word, he stopped abruptly, turning his head to Robert and holding a stare that was not returned.

The hail worsened. Tennessee continued pacing, "just as examples, is priceless. Which leads me to believe, someone who really wanted to cross this road, and I mean really wanted to cross it, would see the cost of their passage as just that," he came to attention one final time, "priceless."

Adrenaline pulled Aaron's chest almost unbearably tight. He was suddenly hyper-aware of the passing of time, particularly its severe lack of momentum. Even the single hailstones he fixed his eyes on seemed to move slowly, like they were falling through blood or honey instead of air.

Tennessee spoke again, after what felt like so long Aaron wondered if he'd imagined him ever speaking at all. "You," he nodded to Robert, "what's your name?"

Robert told him, his voice quivering for the first time.

"Well, Robert," the soldier took four strides forward, the choreographed manner of his gait perfect down to going to the delay between his heel and his toe hitting the ground. He was practically face-to-face with Robert by this point, chin up, assessing him constantly. Scanning him in the way a computer scans files and databases to locate encrypted information. Just what he had been programmed to find, however, was unclear. "I'm going to make you an offer. You can pass this road and be on your way to Inverness, freely," he turned to Aaron with no attempt to stifle his grin, "if you leave your friend here, with us."

The hail by this point had faded into arbitrary white noise. Aaron failed, for all his effort, to describe the feeling that came over him upon hearing those words.

Robert didn't leave time to consider it, "no way, I can't-"

"You pass up my offer, and Taylor will blow his fucking head off, you'll watch, and then he'll do the same to you," then the smile returned, though for all his flawlessly executed actions, he couldn't remove the unhinged undertone quite so seamlessly, "it's your call, Robert."

Silence.

Then, "okay."

A great gust careered down the channel of the road, sending plumes of hail spinning through the army truck's fog lights. Aaron could only watch them, the specks of ice cast in amber for a few fleeting moments before they were flung back into the darkness. He let the howling wind that skimmed his hood and burned his face be his voice. Otherwise he just stood on trembling legs, searching desperately for anything at all in Robert's half-hidden face that would contradict his words. Not so much as a glance was given in return.

"Okay!" Tennessee shouted and clapped his hands together, "pleasure doing business with you." He held the grin for a moment too long, then turned to his accomplice with a falconer's whistle and snapping his fingers in Aaron's direction. The Owl made with purpose towards him, ducking his head against the downpour until he was inches away from Aaron's face.

If Aaron had known what he wanted to do in that moment, he was too overcome with shock to even think about acting on it. On the rare occasion he revisited the memory, he thought more on what he could have done, not what he actually did. He could have made a run for it through the fields that bordered the road, the darkness covering his tracks. He could have shoved the firm hand from his shoulder that guided him to kneel on the patch of grassy kerb illuminated by the headlights, freezing mud and water soaking through his jeans, watching through a curtain of hail as the Volvo roared to life and drove away and kicked up tidal waves in its wake. He'd thought (in detail) of all the scenarios in which he escaped: the ones where he grabbed the Owl's hand as it went to pull down his hood and bent it so far backwards he wailed in agony, the ones where he used a kick in the shin or a punch in the throat to steal his gun. None of them seemed to venture much further, they never let him find out whether or not he was successful.

He could have called to Robert. He could have called to Robert, though he had no idea what he would have said. Maybe it would have just been his name - questioning. Or pleading. Or some sort of accusatory gesture of innocence with enough power in it to guilt-trip everyone involved into letting him go. Otherwise it might have been a scream, a cry, a final _'fuck you, you backstabbing cunt!'_ before a bullet to the brain shut him up. Cathartic, perhaps, but it wouldn't save him. It didn't save him. In reality, he said nothing. A sheep silent before its shearers.

The car was gone before Aaron looked up again. Tennessee waved enthusiastically in its direction, shouting into the pitch black his parting words. "Oh, and Merry Christmas!"

Aaron thought of Liv, waiting by her frosted-up bedroom window, peering into that same void that enclosed the farmhouse with hope that sometime soon she would see that old red Volvo judder into the courtyard, circle the overgrown dry fountain and park on the gravel at the far end. She had only met Zak and Lisa twice, Belle a few times more, but beyond himself and Chas they were probably the closest thing to a real family she'd ever had. He hoped to God (though it felt a little desperate now) that she hadn't been told he was coming, that for all she knew her big brother was still at home in Emmerdale where he was safe and alive. Sooner or later, however, she would have to find out, and the thought of ripping the person she was closest to away from her after everything she'd been through was something he couldn't face the guilt of.

Except it wasn't him who should have had to carry that guilt. It was the man who had driven him out into the middle of nowhere and left him to his death by the roadside. He should have been here, feeling what Aaron felt, weighing himself down with the realisation that he had taken the life of a man who trusted him as payment for his own. Cain had warned him - only that morning, in fact - of the trouble putting your faith in such people would bring, so maybe it was his own fault. If he'd only listened, Robert would never have had the power to do this to him in the first place.

He thought of the hare. He thought of its tentative pace towards him, the flecks of white in its brown fur he could only see at such close proximity, its curious, unpredictable reptilian eyes watching every twitch of his finger, every blink of his eyes. He thought of the speed at which it bolted into the undergrowth when he had reached out his hand, and the powdered white it kicked up as it went, settling again as if the creature had never appeared at all.

The thunder of the hail refused to subside. It might have even become stronger, he wasn't sure, all he knew was that it buzzed in his ears like television static, so constant and grating it separated itself from the sensation on his skin. Over it, he just managed to make out the Owl's voice, conversational but carelessly loud. "-Should have made him watch anyway. Man, I would've paid two hundred bucks to see the look on his face."

Great authors, in his experience, had always described the bombardment of one's exposed skin with hailstones as like being stabbed by a horde of microscopic knives. To Aaron, however, a much more apt metaphor was being dragged through a field of nettles. A never-ending field of nettles, ones that pricked and blistered the skin, rendering it raw and numb and simultaneously in immense pain with every leaf that brushed past. These nettles, in their frozen droplet form, battered his face and soaked through his clothes on impact, they collected in his eyelashes until they became saturated with ice and began to blind him (not that the blizzard gave him much in the way of visibility in the first place). They nestled in his hair like bullets in a wound and dripped onto his nose, into his eyes, his mouth. The tremors that ravaged his body, its own self-inflicted torture to preserve heat and life - much like a trapped fox chews off its own leg to escape - were beginning to ache his exhausted muscles. Before hypothermia sets in, so he'd been told by many survival shows on TV, the victim stops shivering and ceases to feel any sort of sensation of cold. He wasn't at that stage yet, and, in light of his current situation, it was unlikely he'd ever get the chance to reach it.

One of the soldiers, he didn't remember which one, and for the glare of the army truck's lights he didn't suppose he'd differentiated between the hazy silhouettes in the first place, raised his gun in Aaron's direction. He flinched, ducking his head instinctively, only to be met with a chorus of laughter instead. When he looked up, he could just make out the holstered gun and the pair of them doubled over, cackling like vultures. Aaron couldn't help but cry, in terror or in relief. He'd stopped himself up to this point for fear of the consequences, but now - alone, cold, blinded - he was overridden. The sobs were quiet, strangled by the shivering that already ached his chest, and for more than a fleeting moment he begged they would just get on and shoot him so it would all stop.

The truck's fog lights suddenly turned off, plunging the road into absolute darkness. There was nothing, no shapes, no road, no sky. The storm above concealed what tiny salvation the moon and stars would have offered, but did not cease in its bombardment which Aaron now only felt and heard. Closing his eyes did not change the scenery, so he kept them that way. He listened to the sound of ice against tarmac, quieter that of boots against loose gravel, trying desperately to calm the panic grappling with his chest. It was another one of their games, like intimidating him with the gun, and he bet they were enjoying every minute of what they couldn't see unfold on the roadside. Aaron listened for their laughter, their hilarious remarks about how pathetic he was, how they couldn't wait to have their way with him. Nothing.

A bang shattered the air and a searing pain darted through his left arm. He cried a sound almost inhuman, like a struck animal, doubling over clawing at the wound with his opposite hand. The lights came on as he took in the sight of his blood-soaked fingers and the torn flesh from which it poured, over his coat, his jumper, onto the grass below. His head began to feel light, and his stomach heavy. The gorge in his arm was deep, sickening red, but nothing was registering in his brain except from the pain. He screamed again.

The light was blinding. Shouts and laughter echoed somewhere in the distance, shadows passing over his face as the soldiers walked across the front of the truck. The hailstones colliding with his arm felt like acid being poured over it, burning him away. It was only getting worse. The hail. The pain. He tucked his injured arm under his body the best he could to shield it from the onslaught. It became harder to breathe. He registered the soldiers coming towards him, but the light was too much to bear. He dug his fingernails into his left shoulder, gritted his teeth and screamed again. And again.

He didn't hear the car approaching, and apparently neither did they.

 

***

 

For some amount of time, if only a few seconds, he must have passed out, because the next thing he remembered was hands. On his shoulder, his face, his neck. Robert was shouting at him. One of his hands was on his waist, the other on the back of his neck, shaking, holding him up.

"Aaron!" His cry became one of relief when he saw him awake, "Aaron…fuck…" he took his trembling hand from Aaron's neck and used it to wipe the water dripping on his face, resting it on his cheek and pulling him up so their foreheads touched in one frantic motion, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry…"

Aaron savoured the warmth of the embrace. He saw over Robert's shoulder the two American soldiers lying in the road, twisted in impossible positions in pools of blood, the Volvo resting a few yards beyond with the engine still running. Robert took his face in both his hands, the heat of his skin burning Aaron's own, and Aaron could only distinguish the tears on his face from hail because they were still falling. "What happened?" He peered over to Aaron's arm, panic rising in his voice, "you've been shot?"

"It just grazed me," Aaron could barely hear himself. He wanted to scream again with the pain but his lungs couldn't muster the strength, "I'll live."

Robert didn't say anything coherent in response, nor did he dare take his hands from Aaron, for fear he would disappear if he did. One was stained red from where it had brushed Aaron's torn, blood-soaked sleeve, streaks of it washing down his fingers with what had now become rain. The denim jacket he wore was soaked through, turning a dark navy blue and clinging to his body. He held onto Aaron like a dying man (ironically, perhaps), squeezing his eyes shut and swearing through haggard breath, "I'll never leave you again, I promise. I promise."

"It's okay-"

Robert was stunned to laughter, "it's not okay! "It's not okay- Jesus…"

"Robert. I'm fine," Aaron met Robert's eyes, and the energy wasn't there within him to do so but he wished he could jump, and cry and shout with joy at what he saw. He was safe. In Robert's arms, he was safe. Robert had come back for him - he had planned all along to save him! He could feel the wind howling past them, the rain hammering against his abraded skin, the seething pain shooting up to his shoulder blade and down to his fingertips. Robert was searching his expression, panicked and wondering why Aaron wasn't the same. Aaron thought maybe he should be panicking. He was bleeding to death (though the bullet hadn't struck him directly - he would have known if it had - the wound was still deep and ravaging), and the man who stood as the only reason he was still sitting upright had just ran over and killed two American soldiers that would surely be tracked by their superiors (because another thing his mother had taught him about wasps was that they call for backup when you hit them). But all he felt was relief. Relief that he was here. _Alive._ Relief enough that he barely felt the pain the movement to close the distance between him and Robert caused.

The kiss was chaste with shock at first, but it didn't take long for Robert to get over that. He deepened the kiss with what felt, to Aaron, like desperation. His bloodstained fingers ran through the hair on the back of Aaron's head, in a way that said he was still clarifying to himself the whole experience was not some sort of hallucination.

And perhaps that was it. Not the rain, or the near-death experience (though the rain, as he thought back, did play its part in heightening the drama of the moment, too). It was the fact Robert kissed him with a passion that wasn't riddled with lust, but rather something else that felt to him a thousand times more damning. Something that, though not sinister, haunted Aaron for days and weeks afterwards - something he could never find a way to articulate to anyone else.

He could feel his heart running away with him, but maybe that was more the strain he was putting on a body that was still fighting to stay conscious.

Robert pulled away, breathless. He rested his forehead against Aaron's, eyes closed and his hand still clinging to the back of his neck. It took him a while to calm his breathing, and once he did, he whispered without moving, "I love you."

Droplets of rain sent sparks of mild agony down Aaron's arm each time they collided with it. He concentrated on the sensation, hoping somewhere in the silence Robert would say it again. He didn't. Aaron squeezed his arm where he clung to it, hoping then instead that Robert would take that to mean he was too tired to say it back.

Maybe he could convince himself that's what it meant, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry crisis!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't proofread this because i wrote most of it in the last 6 hours and i dont know my own name anymore sorry for grammatical errors and the like

The remaining stretch of the drive was probably up there as one of the worst experiences of Aaron's life. Every bump in the uneven road jolted his injury, sending flares of pain through his body that he could only bear by clenching his jaw and pressing himself further against the car seat. Robert had fashioned a bandage out of one of his white t-shirts, which was now dark red and probably tied too tightly around Aaron's arm. He'd pulled up in a passing place shrouded by tall hedgerows when the initial panic had subsided and he realised Aaron's hand wasn't doing much except from dripping blood over the seat and the door. After rummaging in the boot for a while, he opened the passenger door, the shirt bunched up in one hand, and got to work wordlessly despite Aaron's protests that he was wasting what was probably his only change of clothes. The rain had calmed down, but it was still quite heavy, and still only took the few minutes it took Robert to perform his emergency first-aid to soak through his jacket that had only just recovered from their previous outing.

They pulled up into Braeriach Farm just after eight o'clock. The soft glow emitting from the windows of the farmhouse cast shadows over the gravel of the front yard, and over Robert's face as he helped Aaron out of the car, careful as he could be so not to cause him any unnecessary pain. Aaron leaned against him as they practically hobbled the few long yards to the front door (something he probably would have laughed about had he not been so exhausted). 

The house itself was the kind that was probably rather beautiful in the summer, with ivy climbing its millstone grit walls and arrays of flowers decorating the windowsills, but for now it lay in hibernation. Any indication of life was withered and brown, little more now than twisting branches and dead leaves encased by a layer of frost. An intricate mistletoe wreath interweaved with silver ribbon hung on the wooden front door. Robert knocked, then, impatient, tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. 

Stepping inside the house after all they had endured felt to Aaron like entering an alien world. The hallway was warmly decorated with cream wallpaper embellished with a repeating floral pattern that climbed from the skirting board all the way up to the ceiling. A photograph (or a very good painting, Aaron couldn't really tell) of the farm's namesake hung on the adjacent wall in a wooden frame at a slightly crooked angle, the perfect blue sky that provided the backdrop for the mountain's rocky climb in direct contrast to the welcome Scotland had offered them.

He didn't take his weight from Robert, feeling as if he would collapse if he stood on his own. Robert must have felt him slipping, because he tightened his grip on his waist and used his other hand to steady Aaron by the shoulder. "You alright?" He caught sight of movement from the front room, "Hiya!" 

Aaron nodded. He heard a familiar voice emerging from the direction Robert had shouted to. 

"That doesn't sound like-" Lisa took in the sight in front of her for barely a second before she rushed towards them, "dear God, what's happened to you?"

Before either of them could explain, another voice came from the top of the stairs. "Aaron?" Liv stood frozen in her tracks, shock plastered on her face. 

Aaron met his sister's eyes, half relieved to see her and half destroyed that she had to see him in the state he was. "I'm fine, I'm okay," he tried to reassure her, but his voice was indicating otherwise.

Neither she nor Lisa moved, their disbelief demanding an explanation. Unfinished words and noises were about as much as they got from Robert as he guided Aaron into the living room, the story finally beginning to string together into something remotely cohesive just as they reached the sofa. They (because by now, Zak and Belle had also become aware of the commotion) all stood around Aaron, the concern in their eyes pressing and uncomfortable, as if it was him they wanted answers from and not the man offering them. The room became increasingly hot increasingly quickly, and despite having been shivering in the freezing rain only minutes earlier he could feel himself breaking a sweat. It made him wish he could move away from Robert and the heat of his body, but he still felt as if he would collapse if he tried to sit unsupported. 

What Robert recounted was only untrue by virtue of what he left out: they were stopped by American soldiers some way down a road a few miles from Aviemore, they asked where they were headed, then made Aaron kneel by the roadside and shot at him.

"Whether they were supposed to miss…", Robert said, shrugging defeatedly, "who knows."

Aaron didn't suppose any of their audience had accepted what they had just been told, for all its gaping plot holes, but it wasn't something they were about to waste time scrutinising when one of their own sat bleeding out on their settee. After leaving themselves time to absorb the story, Lisa was the one who stepped forward, speaking surely but with an urgency that teetered on the edge of panic. "We need to get you to hospital as soon as we can-"

Robert was quick in shutting her down with a stern "no," though, aware of his haste, went on to elaborate, "no, there'll be waiting for us." He ran the tips of his fingers lightly around where the edge of the wound would be under the makeshift bandage, barely making contact but still causing Aaron to wince involuntarily. "It only skimmed him, there's no bullet in there."

Lisa made a point of eyeing the t-shirt around Aaron's arm that was now barely holding, "I don't think that makes it any less of a concern, to be honest. I still think we need to take him to hospital."

"I already said, we can't," Robert snapped, initially raising his voice but controlling himself. "Leaving here isn't an option. They're everywhere."

And that was just it: they weren't _supposed_ to be everywhere. The declaration of war had come only that afternoon, in light of what was _supposedly_ the first attack on British soil which had _supposedly_ taken place mere hours before the broadcast went out. If the American forces really had made a direct advance from Dublin to Merseyside across the Irish Sea, and had only got as far as Manchester in the past hour, it was physically impossible for them to have gained the stronghold they seemingly had over the most northern reaches of Scotland in the given time frame. Like the reports that came from the cities, Aaron had seen none of his own country's military presence on their journey, and after what Robert implied in the car, he was unsure if he wanted to. It was dawning on him that maybe their flight had been for nothing, that they were no safer in the Highlands than the Dales they left behind. More to the point, they hadn't been safe here, there - or anywhere for that matter - for a long time.

A loud accusatory voice accompanied Zak's pointing finger, seemingly oblivious to everyone else's focus, "I don't understand- why have you brought Robert Sugden along with you?"

All the eyes of the room fell on the man in question, who instinctively averted his gaze to the ground without any attempt at self-defence.

"He's a-" Aaron was cut off by the pain that darted through his arm as he shifted, "he's a friend. Mum told me you said I could bring a friend. Why?" He looked between the two of them, feigning complete ignorance of the negativity Robert's presence brought into a room, "is there summat you're not telling me?"

Eyes turned to Zak again for retaliation, who opened his mouth to bite, but Lisa was quick to diffuse, "none of that matters now. There's more pressing issues at hand, I think."

Aaron could feel the light-headedness returning, and the desire to just close his eyes and sleep was becoming near overwhelming. He watched Liv, peering from behind the others with terror in her eyes that were fixed on him, trying his best to give her a believable smile. Any confidence Robert had held previously dissipated entirely. Something nagged Aaron to be angry at him for it, for being a coward - just like he had been when faced with the soldiers. He wanted desperately to believe he'd meant to come back for him from the beginning, but with every submission in the face of adversity he doubted Robert's intentions more and more. Aaron could convince himself Robert was a different person when they were alone together - more self-assured, more established - but at times like this he was faced with the reality that there was something everyone who encountered Robert was able to somehow subconsciously use against him, and Aaron was left in the dark, powerless.

Taking charge instead, however reluctantly, Aaron sighed. "Robert's right. We can't go to the hospital."

"Then what-"

Belle, no longer a silent observer, found a solution to her mother's question before she finished it. "There's a first-aid kit in the cupboard," she exclaimed triumphantly, bringing with it a sense of relief that washed over the entire room.

"Oh, course there is, yes." Lisa breathed, turning to assist but finding Belle already one step ahead of her, rushing through the doorway to the kitchen behind them.

The five of them lingered in awkward silence, Zak's pressing stare boring into Robert but except from that, everyone trying to avoid each other. Aaron closed his eyes, concentrating on the sensation of Robert's arm around him, his thumb stroking circles against his shoulder through the soaking fabric of his jumper. He wanted nothing more than to sink into him, to lay his head on his chest and savour the warmth, to sleep and not have to face any of this any longer. But then, of course, there was everyone else to consider. If they didn't much take to the idea of Aaron _associating_ with Robert, God knows what they would think if (or when) they found out he was sleeping with him as well.

"You still remember any of your training you did, love?" Zak called through to the kitchen. The rummaging continued for a while before ceasing suddenly, punctuated by a small exclamation.

"That was CPR and recovery positions, Dad," Belle retorted, re-entering the room now equipped with a green plastic case that looked as if it hadn't seen the light of day for a good few years, a faded white cross just visible across the front, "not dressing a gunshot wound." She knelt beside the coffee table next to Aaron's feet, lifting the box onto it. 

"Well," Zak waved his hand dismissively, "it's all the same thing in't it?"

She seemed irritated by his attitude as she fumbled through the contents of the box, checking each of the packets she pulled out for the right sized bandage. "No. Not really."

After a few attempts of ripping the packet open and then frantically demanding Lisa retrieve the scissors from the kitchen draw, Belle managed to pull the sterile dressing from the wrapper, unravelling it and ignoring her mother's advice to calm down. She ordered Robert to remove his effort at dressing the wound, to which he complied, carefully pulling Aaron's blood-soaked sleeve up over the wound, a sight greeted by a chorus of _ooh_ s across the room. Belle continued trying to find the dressing pad end of the bandage, saline dripping onto her jeans. "Are you sure there's no residue or anything in there?"

 Robert only stammered in response, her barely-controlled panic beginning to take hold of him too, "I dunno, I-"

 But Belle was already delving back into the first-aid kit, pushing the contents around, "we can't take the risk," she finally produced a bottle of antiseptic solution and cotton balls, giving Aaron a more-than apologetic look, "sorry."

 She emptied some of the solution onto one of the pads by tipping the bottle upside-down, handing the soaked pad to Robert, who too looked at Aaron with the same expression of remorse before reaching over to dab the wound with it. Aaron tried his best not to wince with the pain, but that was difficult enough when it wasn't being prodded with medical-grade disinfectant. He couldn't be bothered to be embarrassed when he instinctively grabbed Robert's free hand, squeezing it as tight as he could.

 As Belle went to stand, holding the dressing out in front of her, Lisa began to escort Zak and Liv from the room. "Give him some space, come on. Let's leave them to it."

 "Oh God, don't do that," Belle pressed the dressing pad against Aaron's arm, pristine white quickly turning red, "I've got no idea what I'm doing."

 Aaron laughed, "reassuring, cheers."

 Satisfied the pad was secure, Belle began to wrap the bandage around his arm with more collected precision than she could muster earlier. "Better than what you'd get at the hospital," she said, glancing briefly to Robert, "by the sounds of it."

 Liv's voice came then. Sudden, and wary. "Will they be following you? The soldiers?"

 Robert's head shot up to look at her. Aaron didn't like the way he glared, as if she'd become an inconvenience to his so far faultless plan. Nevertheless, his voice was contrastingly soft and reassuring. "I don't think so."

 "How can you be sure?" Liv retorted. It wasn't an attempt at antagonisation, the dread in her voice said as much. She'd experienced these people first-hand, she'd fled their guns just as Aaron and Robert had, the only difference being that she was alone throughout it all. Now more than ever Aaron saw a terrified child, one who had been forced to leave her mother behind and travel hundreds of miles on her own to a strange house to live with people she barely knew. To face it all again would be traumatising at the very least.

 All eyes were on Robert again, even Belle pausing in the middle of tying the last strands of the bandage around Aaron's arm. He did his best to avoid all of them, averting his gaze to his knees. "I, er..."

  "He hit them with the car."

 The entire room fell still. Robert still didn't look up at him. Aaron half expected Liv to recoil even further in light of his revelation, but the breath she released seemed to be one of relief, not of shock, as was the case with everyone else. It was the same catharsis Aaron had felt when he saw the hands that shoved him down into the freezing mud lie crumpled and lifeless in the road.

 Belle was less impressed, her hands still froze against Aaron's arm in shock. "You what?"

 Aaron just shrugged. "Them or us, Belle."

 "Jesus..."

 He put it down to shock that his reaction wasn't more like hers. Up until now, he hadn't really let himself ponder it too much. He vaguely recalled saying something to Robert, careering down country lanes at ninety miles an hour, slurred as he threatened to slip in and out of consciousness as he had done when he first found him at the side of the road. Something that more or less amounted to _"what the fuck did you do that for?"_

  _"It was them or us,"_ Robert had said. One hand on Aaron's thigh and the other gripping the steering wheel. That was all he said until he pulled over to get his t-shirt from the boot.

There was a stretch longer of stunned silence before Zak broke it. His words, supposedly meant to sound jovial, contrasted with the thinly-veiled vexation in his tone. "Well, not the first time eh?" There was an uncomfortable pause of non-reaction before he spoke again. "Pigs need feeding. Lend us a hand, would you Belle?"

 Belle stood frozen for a moment, watching as he went. She looked, bemused, from Aaron to Robert, unsure perhaps of how she should be reacting, before following him through to the hallway. "Sure."

 

 ***

 

Aaron glanced one last time out onto the yard, watching as Lisa made her way back to the farmhouse. She had showed them to the small but elaborately furnished converted barn that overlooked the front paddock, ensured countless times that Aaron would be alright and wouldn't die suddenly in the night, and explained the issue of the bats in the roof cavity.

"They're protected, so there's nowt we can do about them," she said exasperatedly, "you get used to them after a while."

 When he was certain she was inside, he pulled the door gently shut, turning to face the room as the lock clicked into place. The man before him sat hunched over on the bed, head in his hands.

 "What the hell's he on about, 'not the first time'? Robert?" No reply. Robert remained eerily unresponsive, staring at the floor. The first-aid kit he'd brought over with the intent of changing Aaron's dressing before they went to bed sunk into the depression made by his weight on the mattress, pressing against his thigh. "Robert, what did he mean?" Aaron made towards the bed, practically standing over him when he asked again. "What did he mean?"

 For a while longer, Robert was motionless. Aaron felt the urge to shove or kick him if only to get a response. Then, with a sigh, he raised his head, and slowly dragged his hands down his face as if he had just woken up. There was still a painful, drawn-out hesitation before he spoke. "I didn't want to tell you."

 Aaron folded his arms, trying to ignore the pain that spiked under his skin as he did so. "Obviously."

 "I didn't want you to hate me." Only then did Robert dare to look up, finding Aaron's eyes that couldn't bear to hold his gaze for more than a second. Half of it was the anger that looking at his pitiful expression induced, the other was the fact he could feel tears coming on, and the last thing Aaron wanted to do now was cry in front of him. 

He tried to concentrate on something else, not wanting to give Robert the reassurance he knew he was craving. The walls were decorated with a bold damask paper, turquoise and embellished with a gold pattern, a style that contrasted unfavourably with the traditional wooden beams crossing the ceiling. The whole building was open plan: a spacious ground floor that housed both the bedroom and the kitchen - what was presumably the bathroom tucked away behind a varnished wooden door at the far end, and an upper floor accessible via a flight of bannister-less stairs that opened out onto a balcony overlooking the room below it. The bed, large enough for three people comfortably, was a little too close to the front window for his liking, headboard up against the wall and a painting hanging over it. Aaron had to crane his neck to look at it, some sort of abstract or impressionist piece of a grove of trees under a swirling yellow sun. There was plenty to distract himself with, but no amount of garish interior design could diminish his thoughts entirely. It was well known - the more you try not to think about something, the more you do exactly that.

 Aaron swallowed. He wanted to put it down to shock that he wasn't more outraged. Was it even Robert he should have been angry at? "So you have, then? You've..." he stopped himself, the words more of a commitment than they had to be, "you've killed someone?"

 Robert stopped him, "Aaron-"

 "You have, haven't you?"

 "Sit down, you're not gonna do yourself any good." Robert's voice was still small, tired, as if Aaron's energy exhausted him. The gesture seemed almost audacious, disbelievingly so. After all this time of pleading vulnerability, of apologetic glances and resigned submission, he chose _now_ to try and take control?

 Aaron snapped back at him. "Don't try and change the subject." The whole exchange felt strangely domestic, and regardless of the conversation's heavy subject, he couldn't help but infer that Robert thought the whole thing a lot more trivial than pressing. As if it had been raised a thousand times before and each time was more and more the nuisance to him.

 "I'm not changing the subject. I'll tell you, I just don't want you passing out while I do." With that he looked up again, and again Aaron made the mistake of meeting his eyes. He wanted to say that what he saw in Robert's expression was genuine concern, but by this point he was more than familiar with the effect he had on his judgement. Idolisation was the wrong word perhaps, he all too aware of Robert's flaws, but everything in him wanted to ignore the wrong he saw and love him regardless. Like a sailor who watches his crewmates drown by the call of the siren but still lets himself go under when she takes his hand. He was allowed to indulge in the illusion Robert held up to him, for a few minutes at least, after everything they'd been through it seemed a harmless pursuit.

 He could tell himself it was sheer curiosity that swayed him in the end, sitting on the edge of the bed a careful distance away. "Go on then."

 Robert appeared to jump at the opportunity, his priority being to make one thing clear. "It was an accident."

 "Oh, that's alright then."

 "That wasn't an excuse."

 Aaron scratched his fingers against the linen duvet cover. It was coarse. "What kind of accident?"

 "It was..." Robert laughed bitterly, shaking his head, "...God, it feels like a lifetime ago. I'd come home from uni for the summer, brought my then-girlfriend to meet everyone. Rebecca White, you know, the woman from the pub-"

 "You were seeing her?"

 "No, no, her sister. Chrissie. Bex introduced us."

 "Was it her you killed?" 

 "No- sorry," Robert apologised for his lack of clarity, realising now that this story would have to go into a lot more detail than he'd initially hoped. "Chrissie and I stayed at Home Farm with Rebecca, and one night they went out. I can't remember what it was, a birthday, wedding reception, it really doesn't matter. Anyway, they went out. I was on my own." His blue eyes flickered around, finding the courage to articulate himself appropriately. "I knew this guy when I was at uni, not from uni, technically, but from…living in Sheffield. Connor, his name was. Connor Jensen."

 "What was he, like, a friend? A boyfriend?"

 Robert swallowed, hesitating. "Not exactly." His eyes were now fixated on the patterned rug sprawled across the floorboards, voice low and careful, ashamed. Aaron's chest tightened, realising he was probably the first person Robert had ever revealed this information to. "He was a prostitute," the word was bitter, laced with self-loathing, "one I'd... _encountered_...more than once in Sheffield.  I had his number. I doubted it would work when I phoned it, but it did. I was," he laughed, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes with disdain, "I was fucking gone by this point. I had a bit of a drinking problem at that time. Chrissie hated it. Threatened to break up with me more than once because of it. Dunno why she stayed in the end..." he allowed himself to get lost in the rumination only for a short while before he leapt back onto the subject. "Connor, conveniently, was in Harrogate when I called him, and half an hour later he was on my doorstep." Robert scratched his forefinger against the back of his hand where they lay in his lap, the room so otherwise hung in suspension that the sound of the abrasion could be heard. He sighed again. "A year and a half, it carried on like that. Every time she went out, just about, he'd be over there. And when he wasn't… _available_ …it was someone else." The memory seemed to infuriate him. He clenched his jaw so tight Aaron could see the movement of muscle under his skin, his eyes now closed. "I don't know-",  he raised his head swiftly, looking up to the beams suspended across the ceiling equally in frustration and in order to stop the tears welling in his eyes from falling, "I don't know…why I couldn't have just- _told_ Chrissie, she wouldn't have judged me…like, yeah, it would have been a shock, but she'd accept it…if I'd just told her from the get go that I was - well I thought I was gay then - but bisexual, then none of it would have happened." His expression dropped, returned to reality, "but I didn't. I was...ashamed, for some reason. I hated myself. I hated what I was doing to her. I loved her, I loved her so much..." his voice broke with those final words, and despite his shock Aaron still felt the urge to comfort him in some way, if not to wrap his arms around him and hold him there, then at least to touch him in some way - a hand on his knee, his arm, his shoulder. None of it would come, and instead he sat a silent confidant, or perhaps the officer Robert confessed to over the interrogation table. His tone now more distant, Robert continued, "and I thought I was getting away with it. I had gotten away with it. But apparently someone had been watching…Katie. Andy's wife. My sister-in-law." Robert must have seen the way Aaron's eyes widened in a fearful moment of realisation. He'd only been a teenager at the time, but the passing of time hadn't blurred the memory as much as Aaron wished it had. "You know."

  _Sirens echoed through the village in its late-evening haze, blue lights creeping across his bedroom blinds as they careered down the road past his house. By the time he pulled them back to look out into the street, it was deserted, the haunting wail of the ambulances and fire engines and police cars now distant. Then something caught his eye. A glow, orange and red like the sun that disappeared below the horizon only minutes earlier, thick clouds of black rising from it from behind the trees. Home Farm._

 Aaron stared at him with wide, wary eyes. His voice was small but tinged with something accusatory. "They said it was an accident."

 "It was! Honestly, Aaron," he grabbed Aaron's forearm then, the one without the gaping hole in it, clinging to him tight with a desperation Aaron wasn't going to pretend didn't frighten him at first, tears now spilling from his eyes, "you don't understand...the _nightmares,_ I had about it. I still have about it...I don't need you to tell me what I did was wrong because _I know_. I know. And I-" he loosened his grip but didn't release it entirely, eyes darting away from Aaron's, "I'm not going to stop you from hating me, or not wanting anything to do with me, that's…" he let out a small laugh after considering it, "completely fair. But I don't…" he faltered again, the words caught in his throat that he seemed to visibly recoil from in anticipation of the response they would receive, "I don't want you to be afraid of me." He searched Aaron's face for a reaction, and found nothing. Continuing regardless, his words now tumbled out as if he couldn't get them away from him fast enough, "and I can see you are, a bit, and I don't want you to be, not because it's hard for me but because you don't have to be. I'm not that person anymore."

  _He could hear his mother on the phone in the living room, long bouts of silent listening punctuated by a frantic question or exclamation. As he made his way carefully down the stairs, he picked up the odd fragmented piece of conversation._

  _"You can see it from here. Jesus, it's- it's awful."_

  _"She was only here yesterday."_

  _"Of course he bloody got out. Of all the people-"_

  _Aaron stood at the base of the staircase, the sleeve of his jumper pulled over his fist where it rested on the bannister. Everything was eerily silent, still, as if the entire house itself was anticipating something. "What's happened?"_

  _Chas took him in for a second, only then made aware of his presence. She didn't look as if she had been crying, but something in the way her breath hitched said she was close to it. She stood, discarding the landline on the sofa beside her. Neither of them said anything._

 Aaron resented the way he could feel himself tense up. He wasn't afraid of Robert, not the Robert he'd known up until about ten minutes ago, but the sudden switch had caught him by surprise, and the more he thought over the nature of their situation, the more it unnerved him. He wasn't afraid of Robert, he was afraid for him. Afraid of what this (whatever this was - the confession, the relationship, the war) was doing to him. "Okay."

 Robert observed him for a moment longer, waiting for him to change his mind. When no such decision came, and he realised he was cursed with having to delve himself deeper into this long-repressed memory, he sighed, and pressed on. "She said she was in the house to feed the cats, that Rebecca had given her a spare set of keys ages before me and Chrissie had arrived. She found Connor - it was him that time - in the bedroom. I hadn't heard her come in. I was in the bathroom. When I came out, she was there." He swallowed, his stare now morphing into something distant and haunted, his voice becoming monotonous to the point where he sounded like he was reeling this information off a script. "Things got...very heated. She shouted at me, I shouted back, at some point she smashed a vase and threatened me with one of the shards, saying both of us had to stay here until Chrissie got back so she could see for herself. I just…" the façade threatened to break again. Aaron could see his hands trembling. "I can't explain...or justify anything I did that day. None of it. Katie didn't deserve it. Chrissie didn't deserve it. Fuck, even Connor...he didn't ask to be there…I was so…so angry, and terrified, I just shoved her out of my way-" he seemed to catch the thought from going any further, collecting himself for a second before returning to his more matter-of-fact tone of recall, "and she lost her footing, tried to grab the bannister to steady herself but there was nothing there…Rebecca found out everything first. She came back early, I can't remember why, found me in a state, and basically told me to get a grip and explained what we were going to do. The story would be that Rebecca never gave Katie the key, but that she'd broken in. I'd found her, confronted her, she'd hit me over the head with the vase and knocked me unconscious. When Rebecca came back, she found Katie dousing the place in petrol from the outhouse, tried to stop her, but the fire broke out anyway." The way in which he lay out the fabrication only unsettled Aaron further. It was like he'd conditioned himself to believe it, erasing the truth from his memory for ten years and only now having reason to uncover it. His subconscious was evidently still riddled with guilt, however, probably explaining the nightmares. "For Chrissie's sake, she said, so that she never found out what a lying, cheating, pathetic excuse for a boyfriend I was." He laughed again, shaking his head slowly. "Chrissie wasn't stupid, though. She broke up with me two weeks after, because 'we didn't have anything in common anymore'. Everyone knew the truth, but they couldn't admit it. Andy knew. Hired a hit for me and everything, which was nice. Rebecca said it was best I left, that I let Chrissie recover in peace, and that if I ever came back she would kill me. And she meant it."

 Aaron gave himself a second to try to absorb everything he'd just been bombarded with. He found himself almost resenting the way Rebecca had escaped punishment for covering up the murder when Robert had been forced away from his family, his friends, and just about everything he'd ever known. Something in him couldn't help but admire her for it, however. The lengths to which that woman had gone to protect her sister and her pride and the utter conviction with which she did it was something he'd only ever seen in a Dingle. Besides, had she not given Robert his life back? An upscale flat in Leeds with a well-payed job would be the dream for most people, especially when the alternative was wasting away in a prison cell for the rest of your life, excommunicated or not.

 Despite now understanding the motives behind it all, something about Robert's story didn't add up. "But yesterday, I saw you both together. She definitely didn't look like she wanted to kill you."

 Robert laughed, the dark edge of it prickling Aaron's skin. "You didn't see what happened after. She looks like a small woman but trust me, she's strong."

 He thought to press the issue further, but the point of it surpassed him. The sheer shock of it all had left him unable to even decide what it was he wanted to know. Instead, he rose slowly from the bed, careful not to jolt his arm. "I'm going out. I need to think."

 Robert watched him, on edge as if ready to support him if he fell. He said nothing, only nodded.

 "Will you be here when I get back?"

 "Do you want me to be?"

 Aaron paused with his hand on the door handle, but didn't turn around. "I think so."

 

***

 

The chill of the night was biting, but with no breeze Aaron quickly found himself getting used to it. The porch light revealed as far as the edge of the courtyard, beyond which the fields and hills lay as an indistinguishable blanket of black. A thin layer of snow had fallen since they arrived, thin enough so that the jagged edges of the gravel were still visible beneath it, leaving him confined to the cold stone of the front step for lack of footwear, otherwise he would have ventured further (though not, especially after his recent experience, beyond the safety of the light).

 Aaron still had questions. A number of them, in fact. He didn't suppose many of them would make much difference in the grand scheme of things, or even in regard to the decision he faced at that present moment. A part of him held a sort of resentment at the fact he wasn't, not realistically, allowed to turn his back on Robert completely if that was the decision he came to. If it did come to such an extreme and abrupt end, he imagined Robert would comply, not seeing himself as in a position to protest. Maybe he had some sort of martyr complex Aaron would be allowing him to fulfil if he told him to leave, to pack up and drive himself anywhere that wasn't here, out into the big bad world knowing what lay waiting for him in the shadows. If it wasn't for that, perhaps he would.

 A frail sheet of cloud shrouded the thin sliver of moon that had finally shown (if only a small section of) its face. Aaron hadn't seen Liv for any more than five minutes before Lisa escorted them away to the barn to avoid any further confrontation with her husband, and the same pang of guilt that seemed to follow her memory a lot these days arose in his stomach, one he physically cringed as a result of. The terror in her eyes, the panic in her voice when she first saw him stumble through the front door replayed continuously in his mind, later accompanied by the realisation that he had, in one respect or another, disregarded her completely in favour of sorting out his grievance with Robert - a man he'd only known a week and who was regarded by pretty much everyone else he'd encountered as at best irrelevant and at worst reprehensible. Tomorrow, when everything had been sorted, he'd make it up to her.

 How it was going to be sorted, however, was another matter entirely. No matter how furious and repulsed he might eventually decide he felt towards Robert, throwing him out was almost certainly off the cards for the foreseeable future, if only because he would have to take the Volvo and that would leave Aaron without a car. Even if he made him leave on foot (that is if he got any further than the lower field in his less-than appropriate footwear), it would take weeks, days perhaps, for him to be tracked in their infested surroundings. Once the Americans had him, and once Robert no longer had any loyalties, soldiers would storm Braeriach Farm or otherwise perform some sort of targeted drone strike in next to no time. The war had made all of them prisoners here, their guns to each other's heads.

 So absorbed in the silent debate he was having in his head was Aaron that he didn't notice Belle pull open the stiff front door to the farmhouse across the courtyard, warm light spilling onto the snow-covered gravel from behind her, along with Alfie, who trotted out into the doorway's halo before disappearing off into the shadows. She must have spotted him, considering him and then the direction in which the dog had wandered off before shoving her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown and trudging across the gravel towards him, shouting to him as she went, "what are we doing out here? Freezing to death?"

 Aaron watched as she approached. "Thinking."

 "About what?"

 "It doesn't matter."

 "It obviously does." She sat down on the step beside him, the toes of her slippers soaked through and her legs shivering slightly. "Is it Robert?"

 Aaron considered trying to hide his frustration, but something about his severe lack of sleep over the past two days and the incessant ache in his left arm denied him the energy. "How does everyone know except from me?"

 Belle furrowed her eyebrows, defensive. "Know what?"

 "What he's…" when he realised her oblivious expression was genuine, Aaron regretted ever bringing up the subject in the first place. He'd just been shot, for God's sake, there could well have been plenty of things on his mind other than Robert Sugden, "done. It doesn't matter."

 Even the gentlest gust of wind sent both of them hunching over, Belle scrunching her hands up in her pockets. "What's he done like?"

 "Ask your Dad. Or Rebecca White. Or anyone else in the Emmerdale, apparently."

 That only dug Belle further in bewilderment. "What do you mean? What's Rebecca White got to do with anything?" She waited for an explanation, and when she got none, her tone changed. "Aaron. I can't help you if you don't tell me what the fuck you're going on about."

 Aaron turned to look at her for the first time. She was unnaturally pale in the dim moonlight. "Maybe I don't want your help."

 "Oh, give over. You won't find any answers you don't already have if you just sit and mull it over by yourself."

 As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. He blurted the words out with such haste he doubted for a second if he'd said them at all. "He killed Katie."

 "Shut up. Katie Sugden?"

 "No, Katie fucking Price, how many dead Katies do you know?"

 Belle lowered her voice, but didn't lose the urgency, unfazed by the outburst. "He killed her? What- how?"

 "It was an 'accident'," Aaron half-heartedly gestured quotation marks with his good hand, "and no-one's ever let him live it down, apparently."

 Belle considered the thought. Her gaze wandered from him out onto the yard, where two trails of footprints headed in opposite directions were the only thing to permeate the snow. "Well that's probably a fair one, seeing as he's like, a murderer or whatever."

 "I just said it was an accident," Aaron snapped back at her. The level of defence in his voice came as a shock even for himself, as it seemingly had quite frequently of late. He shouldn't have been so surprised by now that he was willing to go to such great lengths for this man, it would do him better to just embrace the fact he was in under his head and there was no escaping it. The gust came again, rattling the bare frames of the trees that loomed over the far side of the paddock, invisible in the dark. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the light patter of dog paws against the gravel.

 "You said 'accident'," Belle imitated Aaron's gesture, her fingers poking out of her pyjama sleeves that were pulled over her hands, "which implies it wasn't."

 Aaron sighed, defeated. "I don't know…I don't know."

 And that was just it. Perhaps it was bitterness, resentment, both of the fact he'd remained oblivious to a secret that plagued the consciences of just about every inhabitant of the village, one that ran so deeply through their history - his history - and because, when the secret was so unceremoniously revealed to him, he found himself siding with the villain. His desire to be involved had only pushed him further away, if only literally. There was no doubt in his mind that Katie's death was an accident, even the greatest actor in the world couldn't recreate the horror he'd seen in Robert's eyes when he grabbed his arm, the sensation of his fingers squeezing tight lingering still on Aaron's skin. However much he found himself being drawn to him, he couldn't help but fear, not the man himself, but the burden he carried like an iron chain around his neck. That if he was not careful that would become his burden, too.

 He looked up to the sky. Only a few wisps of cloud were streaked across it, tarnished in a silver tint by the low light of the moon. The rest was clear, open, littered with countless constellations. He searched for the North Star, as he always did, tracing the brow of the plough and following the line across the black. His eyes rested instead on a smudge of cloud.

 Belle spoke again, after thinking it over some more. "I thought she died in that fire, that-" her face dropped, "shit, he started it?

 "Yeah," Aaron found some bittersweet satisfaction in being able to reveal this secret to someone else, "but like I said. It was an accident. And no-one's forgotten."

 "You don't accidentally start fires."

 "He accidentally pushed her over the bannister. The fire was a cover up."

 Belle narrowed her eyes. Her cheeks had become red with the cold when she turned to him fully this time. "Who's no-one?"

 "Rebecca has it out for him, apparently. But mainly Andy. He ordered a hit on him."

 "You're kidding."

 Aaron shook his head, half out of the disbelief that he wasn't. "Andy told Adam. And Ross and Pete, presumably. They were all talking about it in the pub last night."

 "Is that when you found out?"

 "No, cause no-one thought to tell me." He made no effort to hide his resentment, his younger cousin was hardly likely to hold him to account for being childish. "Cain tried to, but even he didn't seem that bothered by it, you know?" He shook his head, "I dunno. Everyone keeps making these snide comments about him, like they're trying to put some sort of idea in my head, but none of them will outright say: Robert has homicidal tendencies. Don't hang around with him."

 Belle raised an eyebrow. "Well it's a bit more than hanging around isn't it? And maybe that's cause they respect the fact you're an adult who can make your own decisions about these kind of things?"

 Stupid as it was, it hadn't even crossed Aaron's mind that his cousin might be a little more perceptive than he gave her credit for. That considered, he wasn't exactly sure how subtle they'd been back at the farmhouse earlier. "But if he was that dangerous they would be taking it further, surely."

 "You sound like you've already made your mind up." Belle didn't take her eyes off him. "Aaron, I don't want this to sound like...a bit condescending coming from your teenage cousin, but this is something I think you have to decide on your own."

 "I know."

 "Like...everyone's gonna have their own opinions of Robert, and yeah, you should definitely take those into consideration cause they might know something you don't. And cause killing people is kind of a big deal…but at the end of the day, you might also know a side of him that they don't. I think you should be careful, sure. But don't let them stop you."

 "Yeah." He exhaled, relieved almost to have someone explain his thoughts to him, to decode and order them and rewrite them in a language he understood. "You're right."

  "I mean…" Belle frowned, lifting her hand as if to gesture something but letting it fall back in her lap when it failed her"…with everything going on…what really matters anymore, anyway?"

  _Everything going on_. The Tennessean soldier's smooth face, grating laughter, mangled body, scratched the back of his mind. "You ever seen any of them?"

 Belle swallowed, pursing her lips as if to say _I have, but I wish I hadn't._ "They fly their planes over almost every day now. But better planes than drones."

 "Better drones than nukes."

 "Better they embrace the Christmas spirit and hold them off for the next few weeks," she crossed one slipper-clad foot over the other, "or at least until the new year, would be a shame if we got this far to just get vapourised at one minute to midnight."

 Aaron laughed quietly at the thought, Belle soon joining him. Then, in unprovoked synchronisation, both of them peered up for one final glance at the sky, as if a great flash of light would appear above their heads on cue and shatter the darkness.

 With the air not getting any warmer, Belle stood and announced she would be heading back for the comfort of the farmhouse, citing fears of hypothermia. Aaron watched as she went, arms pressed tight against her body, until she was absorbed back into the glow flooding out of the front door. She called one, brisk and quiet "Alfie!", concealed behind the heavy wooden door, and in an instant the dog reappeared, frolicking across the snow with his tongue hanging from his mouth. The door shut behind him, and Aaron was cast in darkness once again, his decision just about set in stone.

   

***

 

When he stepped inside the barn again, pulling the door shut behind him, Robert stood from where he sat on the bed.

 He'd been crying. His eyes were red, his face still stained with tears for all his effort to wipe them away.

 They watched each other, warily, as Aaron took the few paces necessary to reach the end of the bed. The sound of his shoes against the wooden floorboards became dampened as he stepped onto the rug, standing far enough away from Robert that he was just out of reach if he held out his hand at arm's length. He sighed, not breaking away from Robert's searching eyes that flickered as they scanned every minute detail of his expression.

 "We all have our pasts…" he said, watching Robert's face shift before his eyes. Did he really think Aaron was going to throw him out into the night? With everything that was going on out there? After everything they'd been through? He swallowed, making sure he was as certain with his decision as he thought he was "…and I don't feel like I'm in a position to hold yours against you."

 There was a gleam then in Robert's eyes that Aaron was sure he had imagined. Something fleeting, uncontrolled, before it was concealed again for the sake of reluctance. Except from a slight hitch in his breath, Robert only froze, afraid that any move he made now would change Aaron's mind so drastically.

 So it was Aaron instead who made the move. He took Robert's hands in his own, both trembling - Aaron from the cold and Robert from something else.

 "It's okay," he raised the hand of his good arm to Robert's face, fingers tracing along his jaw, "it's over now."

 He pulled Robert down with the gentlest of force, bringing their lips together as one final effort to bring calm to the storm. He half-expected to be met with the same desperation as when Robert had kissed him after saving him from the American soldiers, but this was nothing like that. It was slow, careful, attentive, as if both of them were doing everything they could to memorise every movement, every second.

 The happiness didn't last, however. Robert pulled away, and, in next to no time, returned to his state of agitation. He inhaled another shaky breath, before saying what had evidently been playing on his mind for some time. "At Lockerbie...when we stopped off for food. You said I looked shaken."

 "Yeah. What happened?"

Robert flexed his right hand, trying and failing to retain composure as he delivered his confession. "They'd been there. The Americans. Been and gone. Ransacked the entire place. Went into this one shop, can't remember which one it was now, and I didn't think there was anyone behind the counter...but then I looked, and," tears began to well in his eyes again, and Aaron could see his frustration, either with that or with what was to come in the story, "there was a woman there, an old woman, and she was-" he snapped his mouth shut, reciting the memory forcing him to relive it. "I'm so sorry, I should've told you. If I'd told you, you would've known they were already here and then we could have gone a different way and-"

 Aaron cut him off abruptly. "It doesn't matter. Listen," before he could think about it, he took Robert's face in his hands, his hot cheeks burning against Aaron's wind-chilled fingers as they stroked his skin, this time Aaron becoming the one to search the other man's eyes, "it doesn't matter. It's over now. Everything that happened, it's happened. It's in the past. There's nothing either of us could have done to stop it. We're here, we're safe, we're together. Okay?"

 Robert nodded. "I just didn't want to scare you." His voice was tiny, barely there.

 "I know. It's alright."  Aaron took him in to another hug, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him in. Robert made more of a conscious effort not to jolt Aaron's arm this time, instead throwing his arms around his shoulders and burying his face into the crook of his neck. Aaron savoured it, and for a long while they stayed like that, swaying gently in the middle of the room. Eventually, Aaron spoke again, turning his head. "You said you loved me. Before."

 Robert laughed into his shoulder. "I was kind of hoping you hadn't heard that."

 "Why?"

 Robert pulled away, but only enough so that he could look Aaron in the eye, his hands still resting either side of his neck. His expression still held a sense of awe, inadequacy perhaps. "I…" he shrugged, smiling sheepishly, "I dunno…I don't even know your star sign…or what your favourite film is."

 "You know how I like my coffee." That earned him another laugh. "It's alright. I think with everything that's going on…" he sighed, "I think we need to love each other."

Maybe he did love Robert, maybe he didn't. Maybe he'd decide tomorrow, or next week, or in five years, that what Robert did wasn't something he could forgive him for, that he could never truly love someone he could only ever see one side of. Had it been any other circumstance, maybe he would have resented the way he could fall so hard and so fast for someone he tried so hard to deny he didn't really know at all. It wouldn't matter if he ended up heartbroken at the end of it all, because what was to come would dwarf any such feelings and only make him regret not using his freedom while he still had it. Freedom to make the wrong decisions was still freedom, after all.

 Some time later, they were laying under the covers of the bed, wet clothing discarded only to be replaced with more jumpers and joggers in a vain effort to combat the freezing air of the unheated barn. They had been lying there for a long while in silence, in complete darkness, Aaron resting his head on Robert's chest listening to the gradual slowing of his heartbeat. His injured arm was draped over Robert's waist, the man's soft and soothing caressing of the inside of his wrist with his thumb the only indication he wasn't yet asleep. The pain was something Aaron didn't figure he was getting used to any time soon, and he could feel it already battling his exhaustion over whether or not he would sleep much tonight.

 The hum of Robert's voice, low and vulnerable, vibrated through Aaron's body as he spoke. "Are you scared?"

 Aaron sighed. Twisted his hand around to interlock his fingers with Robert's against the cold mattress cover. The wind outside howled, rustling the tree branches and hedgerows in such a way he could almost mistake the sound for the distant groan of jet engines. He nodded briefly, hair brushing against the fabric of Robert's sweatshirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When America bombed Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, witnesses on the ground reported seeing "a brilliant flash of light" followed by "a loud booming sound". In the past 70+ years, of course, nuclear weapons technology has advanced significantly and I have no idea how the effects of modern warheads would differ visually (except from being obviously a hell of a lot bigger). 
> 
> Braeriach is the third-highest mountain in Scotland and in the entire British Isles, following only Ben Nevis and Ben Macdui. It lies about ten miles from Aviemore, and for the sake of an isolated setting, the farm itself probably lies somewhere between the two (though closer to the town).
> 
> I never took a first aid course so I got everything about dressing a wound from St John's Ambulance dot org dot uk :)


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